In Times of War
by thebluemeany
Summary: Something happened during The War. Something, twenty years later, the Federation will go to any lengths to keep quiet. Sisko is gone. But the Cardassian tailor is still alive. As is the young doctor who followed an order. Living in Lakat and trying to forget the past, Julian Bashir is about to find out just what he and his hero did In The Pale Moonlight...
1. Prologue Past

The rules aren't important. Not really. What you have to remember, what's important is: it's linear. Every time you throw the ball a hundred different things can happen. The batter might swing and miss. He might hit.

The point is you never know.

You try to anticipate, to act as best you can: keep your eye on the ball, play fair. But in the end, it all comes down to one thrown pitch after another. With each new consequence, the game begins to take shape. All you can do is keep playing and see what happens.

My father taught me that. He was a hero; a man of action. He was a good man. He was a good man.He saved the Alpha Quadrant and learnt to live with what he'd done, and I…

I have never learnt to live without him.

But the game he started so long ago is still in motion. And people are dying out there. His baseball sits on my desk and when I sleep I meet his ghost in the moonlight.

So I need to write about this. About what my father did and what happened next. In times of war when the law falls silent, good men must not.

I need to tell you the story of the Englishman in Lakat.


	2. The Englishman in Lakat

On the promenade is the Englishman: still waiting in an outdoor café, still sat alone at a table for two. He gazes out on an alien river flowing under an alien sky. Far from a station where he once belonged and the only human on Cardassia; Julian Bashir dreams of home.

An almost empty cup of Tarkalean tea sits in front of him on the table. Next to it is a book: 'The Constant Gardener', translated by hand and waiting to be lent. He drums his fingers on the cover.

"Where the hell are you?" he says.

As always, his friend is late.

Around him swarm the people of Lakat; all enjoying the sun, all of them Cardassian. Bashir fans his face and neck. For him the temperature is always too hot. The air is always too close.

It's twenty years since the end of the Dominion War. Twenty years since this world was destroyed, left in flames. Two million dead in this city alone. He tries to suppress the memory of bodies rotting in the heat.

But the past is not easily forgotten in Lakat.

 _I need a drink._

"Waitress," he calls in Cardassian and raises his hand.

Most of the passers-by react to him with muted hostility. Bashir recognises a few: patients he's treated at the hospital; neighbours he's walked by in the street; said good morning to.

 _They don't want me here_ , he thinks. _They_ _tolerate_ _me because Cardassia needs doctors. And because I've got the right papers. But they don't want me here._ _I could cure the Roasdian Plague and they still wouldn't want me here._

The waitress approaches his table. She's young. Too young to remember the war _._ Bashir is the only non-Cardassian she's ever seen and it shows.

He gives her his patented boyish smile.

"Hello. You're new here?" She doesn't answer. He presses on, undeterred. "I'm Bashir. Doctor Bashir. From the hospital. Human… obviously." He lets a flash of his younger, tactless self seep through. "The only one of us left on Cardassia, as it happens. So I do like making new friends." He hands her the nearly empty cup. "I'll have another of these."

Her face wrinkles in scaly disgust. She eyes what's left of the thick, syrupy liquid with suspicion. It's obviously alien, obviously Human.

Deliberately Human. In the past three years, Bashir has turned simply being there, being obviously different into an art-form. Turned friendliness and not shutting up into a personal crusade.

"What is it?" she asks.

"Tarkalean tea. With three sugars." He leans forward in his seat. "Go on. Try some. If you want to, that is."

She takes a tentative sip.

"What do you think?"

Her expression softens. "It's… not bad."

"No, it's not."

He gives her the boyish smile again. _Well-worn but it usually works._ The waitress returns it slightly before exiting with the cup. _A victory for the good guys._

His PADD, resting on the table, beeps and lights up. It's a breaking news alert.

 **Romulan investigators hunting those responsible for last month's biogenic attack which killed 103 people find evidence to trace the source of the gel used to-** ".

Bashir swipes it away. "Not today thank you." The story is from Cardassia Today, the sole 'news' provider on the planet. He can live without their daily dose of propaganda and paranoia right now.

An elderly couple walk by on the promenade. They talk about him, loudly, in Cardassian. Laughing. _They think I can't understand._ The Englishman waves at them _-_ with only two fingers – and an exaggerated friendliness bordering on the vengeful.

"Glorious weather we're having!" His Cardassian pronunciation is perfect. "Tell me," he shouts as they hurry away, "do you think it will rain later?"

He's human, he's alien: they loathe him no matter what he does. _Fine_. _Let_ _them_ _._ He won't hate them. _I'm still a doctor. I still give a damn. Nothing will ever change that._ _Not war or time or loneliness and definitely not ignorant, small-minded -_

"But I don't want to go shopping," moans a child from behind him.

Turning, he sees a Cardassian mother struggle her squirming daughter's claws into the restraints of a pram. "Behave," she says, "or I'll let the Human get you."

The child stills. So does Bashir. That one got through. He's bothered by that one.

"Why is his skin like that?"

"Be quiet," says the mother.

The waitress reappears with his order: one Tarkalean tea, extra sweet. Bashir buries his feelings and forces another smile.

"Thank you," he says naturally. But the ever-pleasant act is getting harder to keep up. He rubs his temples. He's going to need help. "You know, I think I need something stronger than the tea…"

"We've got kanar," offers the waitress.

Inwardly, he deflates. _Oh, wonderful. Kanar. Again. A drink both blue and opaque - who wouldn't want that?_ In the past three years, Bashir has put up with a lot of kanar.

"Perfect," he says. "A bottle of that."

She moves to take away the second placemat.

"No-." He reaches to stop her hand. It's an unconscious, human gesture. Too sudden for Cardassians. She flinches: his skin is hot. Strange.

Immediately, Bashir retracts his hand. _You idiot,_ he berates himself. _You should have learnt by now._ "Sorry; sorry. I didn't think. I'm waiting for someone."

The waitress quickly retreats inside.

"Nice work Julian." He sighs. "Damn…"

Midday: the singular bell of the ruined Cathedral clangs out from the north bank. _Not quite the chimes of St Paul's, but close. Close enough to pretend. And… if there's one thing all Bashirs know, it's how to pretend._

 _The river. The river is right._ He focuses on the distorted city reflected in the water. The shimmering and shifting shapes of the skyline; on the mirror of the Cathedral's dome. Alien architecture blurred by the flow: into an echo of London. Jules's home. His home. Long ago.

"Doctor!" A familiar voice snaps Bashir back to reality.

Another echo of the past now stands by the table. A fresh-faced lieutenant; twenty-four and rather awkward. Keen to get on in the Cardassian military and eager to impress. _Bright, naïve, curious…_

… _saveable_.

Bashir smiles at him. This is Montag Giel, the friend he's been waiting for.

"This never happened to you!" says Giel. He throws a book on the table.

The cover illustration shows one little ship dwarfed by red blood cells. Messy, Cardassian words are scrawled beneath it; the Doctor's best attempt to translate 'Fantastic Voyage by Isaac Asimov' in purple ink.

"You can't just shrink yourself down and stroll about in a living body!" He sits.

"Well no," says Bashir. "Of course not. That'd be ridiculous." Opening the menu, he allows the Cardassian a moment of vindication before adding: "We were half an inch tall inside a circuit board."

"A circuit board." Scepticism shoots through Giel's voice.

"A vast optronic forest. Isolinear chips and towering encryption sub-processors as far as the eye could see."

"And how did you breathe?"

Bashir gestures at his unopened menu. "Aren't you eating?"

"The air molecules would be too big to take in."

"I hear the Iotian spiced pudding is rather good today…"

Giel sighs and will, Bashir knows, let the matter drop. After a year of weekly lunches with the doctor, he's grown used to asking questions that don't get answered. Used to stories that can't possibly be true.

And besides; there's A New Book. Right there on the table. A New Book that Giel hasn't read yet. Temptation left within easy reach. Bashir waits, like a good poker player waits, for the young Cardassian to take the bait.

After a moment, he does. "Is it a James Bond?"

"Not quite. Close."

The young Cardassian visibly wavers. _Ah-ha._ The doctor supresses a smile. _Got him_. _The more human literature he reads…the more he likes it._ A war orphan filtered into uniform, Giel no longer has an absence of father figures. He has too many of them.

"But," says Giel, trying for firmness, "Legate Vorlem says Cardassians should only read Cardassian literature. That alien culture corrupts our values, poisons our state from within. He says that's why we lost the war, why we've fallen from past glory. That species should stick to their own kind."

Bashir isn't going to listen to this bullshit today. "Legate Vorlem is wrong."

Giel scans the immediate area, alarmed someone might have overheard. "Doctor…"

"You know it. You do."

The boy fidgets and looks away. "Legate Vorlem also says… any aliens left on Cardassia, who remained after the border closed, could have some hidden motive…"

Bashir lets him talk; he knows Giel has a job to do. He's known it from the moment the boy first made contact and struck up a conversation.

"… that they could try to influence our people in favour of the Federation. Try to raise dissent against the government. Or send messages off world."

"You're not suggesting, are you Giel, that I'm some sort of _spy_?"

"Yes," he says bluntly.

Bashir is a little taken aback. The two of them have been playing this cat-and-mouse game for months. Giel's just broken the rules.

"I'm a doctor," he says. "Just a doctor." It's true.

"A _Starfleet_ doctor."

"Not anymore." He reaches for the kanar and pours them both a drink.

"Loyal to the Federation though?"

"To the Federation," he concedes. "And to other things."

"Such as?"

"Oh the usual: life, liberty, the pursuit of happy hour." Bashir looks over the label on the bottle: 2370. "This is older than you are," he says.

Giel hesitates. His reptilian eyes flick down and focus covetously on The New Book _._ He picks it up. "Well, if you're not in contact with Starfleet…"

"I'm not."

"Then why are you wearing your combadge? There isn't a ship in the sector that could pick up its signal. At least not one we know about-"

 **WHAM!** A phaser bolt splits through the kanar bottle.

There's chaos. A hail of splintered glass, blue liquid. Noise. Screams. **WHAM!** _More phaser fire!_ **WHAM! WHAM! WHAM!**

Bashir is on the ground, behind the cover of an overturned table. _Did I do that? Did I turn the table over?_ **WHAM!** _I must have._ His brain races to catch up, to process the last five seconds. _Yes, I did that_ , he realises. **WHAM!** _And pulled Giel down with me._ **WHAM! WHAM!**

"Someone's shooting!" yells Giel.

 **WHAM!**

"I know that!" yells Bashir.

 **WHAM!**

All around, Cardassians scatter away. Giel and Bashir remain trapped. **WHAM!** _Whoever is holding the phaser is definitely shooting to_ _kill_ _and definitely shooting at_ _us_. **WHAM!** He grabs the disruptor from Giel's holster and takes the safety off. **WHAM!**

"Game of darts. Just a game of darts," he repeats under his breath, trying to convince himself. He's done things like this before, many times. _Why the hell does it never get any easier?_

 _Deep breath._

Bashir bolts up; sees the target, aims, shoots…

He's already back behind the table as the shot hits home. There's a muffled cry and the phaser fire ceases. _Bulls-eye_. As always, the augmented doctor has an unfair advantage.

Giel pops his head over the make-shift parapet. This is a new experience for him. "Did you get him?" he asks excitedly.

"Keep under cover," hisses Bashir.

The boy drops to his level.

 _That was a_ _Federation_ _phaser._ The doctor tries to order his thoughts. _The length of the blasts… the metallic taste in the air-_

A thud. Behind the table, someone is moving.

Giel looks at him. There's an expression of expectant belief on the boy's face _. He's looking at me the same way I used to look at Ben Sisko._ This thought terrifies Bashir almost as much as the shooting did. Tightening his grip on the weapon, he raises a finger to his lips.

 _Stay silent._ _Listen. Listen…_

Footsteps. Slow, heavy and with effort. A slight moan. The click of an open comm channel. And then…

… a hum Bashir hasn't heard in a long time. The unmistakable sound of a transporter beam kicking in. A Federation transporter.

Taking someone home.


	3. An Open Channel

The Cardassian justice system isn't fair: but it is thorough. As the sun drops behind the shadow of the Great Cathedral, a mass of very young, very meticulous deputies scour what's left of the café. They work with diligence and with purpose to preserve the scene at the moment of the crime.

At the epicentre is the Englishman; splattered blue with kanar and doing his best to not look like a public nuisance. But the devastation radiates out from him like ripples over water: upturned tables, smashed plates, chairs scorched by phaser burns.

Beside him sits Giel; nervous, silent and with a cut on his forehead.

The far wall is showered in a spray of dark, red blood.

Bashir risks another glance toward the doorway. Toward the exit. Toward the still, solemn, middle-aged figure of Gul Pa'dar.

For the past hour, the Gul has done nothing but simply sit, a good fifteen meters across the room and stare at him. Even now, as a young medic talks Pa'dar through her forensic report, the Cardassian's eyes remain firmly locked on the doctor.

The medic motions to the wall. Bashir pulls at a rip in his shirt. He doesn't need to hear what she's saying to know the blood is human. The Gul wouldn't be here if it wasn't.

 _And that is… a lot of blood._ He grimaces. _I must have hit the brachial artery_. It was what he was aiming for after all. Knowledge learnt with the intention only to heal, now used to harm. _Easily a fatal wound._ _The assassin, whoever he was, won't survive the night._

 _No_ , breaks through the voice in his head, _and neither will you at this rate. This is no time for sentimentality Doctor. The transporter, the phaser, the style of the attack. The Federation are here and they're trying to kill_ _you_ _. Face reality; stay focused and think._ _Why?_

Bashir's thoughts return to the same old fear. _Something must have happened_. _Something disastrous. Another war perhaps? Or worse, another Khan._ Some change in the wind and the genetically engineered were now an unacceptable threat; a risk to be quietly eliminated.

He'd always been aware of the possibility. Aware of how precarious his position; their position actually was.

 _The others._ His stomach knots. _The unlucky ones._ Hidden away, unseen, in institutes across the Federation. _They wouldn't have a chance. I never should have left them._

"Give me your PADD." It's the Deputy. Again. Heavy-set and hulking over him. "The PADD!" he booms.

Bashir hands it over. For the fifth time in six hours, they're inspecting his papers. He tries not to tense. His permits _are_ genuine. The Legate who signed them however…

…well, he was many things but genuine wasn't one of them. Bashir silently prays the Deputy is too young to remember the notorious Elim Garak.

"Deputy Damark!" Pa'dar calls across the café. "Over here."

The Deputy obeys immediately: PADD in his hand and Bashir's papers clearly displayed, he moves to attend his commanding officer.

 _His much older commanding officer!_

"Ah-," says the Englishman, stopping him with a nonchalance he doesn't feel. He gestures to the PADD and smiles ever-pleasantly. "May I?"

The Deputy's eyes narrow. But he can find nothing wrong with the papers. He forces the device into Bashir's hand, pressing it's sharp edge into his skin.

"Thank you."

Bashir waits for the Deputy to get a little further away before reactivating the PADD. A press of an icon and he accesses the Sub-ether. As he scrawls through 'Cardassia Today', story after story flicks by.

There isn't much intergalactic news: a few follow-up reports on last month's biogenic attack - updates from the Romulan investigation team and images of settlements on Eurai in ruins.

 _Terrible, but that sort of thing always happens in that part of the quadrant._

He swipes on.

An ion storm evacuation of Narva (wherever that was); some Vulcan racketball player caught doping; another bloody Royal Wedding on Brax. Nothing from Blighty, from the Earth: but slow news days are normal in paradise.

 _No news about Augments either_. There never was - good or bad. They were the unnaturals, theillegals, the freaks: an embarrassment that didn't quite fit with the Federation's image. People like him couldn'tpossibly exist in paradise! It was unthinkable. And they certainly couldn't be in Starfleet!

Bashir's hand unconsciously goes to his chest, to his combadge; confirming its presence, tracing its lines for reassurance and for comfort.

His combadge.

He freezes as realisation dawns. _I need to get rid of my combadge!_ He's suddenly aware of it, sitting there above his heart. Broadcasting out a beat all of its own and giving him away. Signalling out to listening ears: 'Here's the monster. Come and get him'.

His fingertips itch to take it off. To get rid of it. To get out of there. His mind races. _The Starport, that's where I'll go_. _I can find a ship there, stowaway, travel light._ _Run as far away as possible -_

"No..."

Giel's soft exclamation pulls Bashir back to the here and now. _Oh Christ;_ _Giel_ _. What am I going to do about Giel?_ He'd forgotten about him. _The boy is a walking disaster area. I can't leave him in Lakat. Not alone; not to the Order._

Over by the entrance, the Deputy is unceremoniously tearing up 'Fantastic Voyage' into the wastepaper basket.Giel is on his feet; his eyes are wide.

Bashir's heart beats faster. _He can't be naïve enough to actually try and stop it? He can't be!_

"Don't - "

 _Bloody hell, he can!_ "Shut up and sit down," he whispers. "Now."

The boy does as he's told. Bashir breathes a shallow sigh of relief. 'The Constant Gardener' is next. Fragments of page, crinkled and yellow, flutter down and into oblivion. The Deputy takes the phaser from his holster; fires and smiles as the paper sets alight.

There's little Giel or Bashir can do. They watch as the books burn.

A moment passes.

Bashir reaches for a bowl of sand peas on the bar. Leaning closer to Giel, he rests one on the back of his hand. "Watch this," he says confidentially.

He flicks his wrist. The pea catapults into the air. As it falls back down, he catches it in his mouth. A trick Miles O'Brien once taught him. A distraction passed on from long ago.

Giel is impressed. Forgetting their situation, forgetting his lost Earth books, he goes for the bowl and tries to copy the doctor's trick. Reptilian claws fly everywhere. The pea bounces as it hits the floor.

"The secret," Bashir demonstrates, "is positioning the pea correctly on the hand. Like this."

The boy mirrors him, concentrating intently. He flicks his wrist. The pea catapults up, up, up… and falls… straight into Giel's mouth…

"Yes! You've got it!"

... straight into his windpipe…

"Oh," says Bashir.

…just as Gul Pa'dar finally comes across to speak to them.

"Ah. Erm…" He swivels between a Gul whose patience clearly wore thin several hours ago and his choking companion. "Breathe, Giel, remember to breathe." He gives him several hard whacks on the back.

The young Cardassian coughs violently.

"It's okay: I'm a doctor," Bashir reassures the Gul.

"Yes, so you keep saying." Pa'dar is holding his witness statement. "Just a 'simple doctor'," he quotes and then looks, very deliberately, to the blood-soaked wall.

Bashir follows his gaze and his train of thought. _A rather improbable shot for a simple, middle-aged doctor…_

Pa'dar summarises his statement. "A simple doctor who couldn't hazard a guess of his attacker's species; isn't sure of the type of phaser used and doesn't remember if he heard a Federation beam."

Bashir decides not to say anything.

"The blood is human, if you were wondering," says Pa'dar. "Type O."

"Oh?" He leaves a long, innocent pause before standing. "May I go?"

"Do you know the two rules of Cardassian policing Doctor?"

It's clearly a rhetorical question. A rhetorical question that, Bashir senses, begins a speech Gul Pa'dar has given many times before. He sits back down.

"Number one," announces the Gul, "find someone to torture. In the absence of suspects, victims will do. Just as long as there's someone to torture. Rule number two-"

"Sir," interrupts Giel.

Pa'dar ignores him. "Someone is always guilty." The Gul smiles dangerously. Bashir gets the feeling that in this instance, that someone is probably going to be him. "Now, can you think of any reason why anyone would want you, 'a simple doctor', dead?"

"No."

"None at all?"

The only human resident of Lakat has a suggestion: "Mistaken identity?"

Pa'dar hauls him up onto his feet. "I don't like phaser fights in mycity Doctor." He pulls him closer. "If there's something you're not telling me -"

Giel leaps to his defence. "The Doctor acted very fast sir."

"Did he now?"

"Yes sir, saved my life sir. I wouldn't doubt his word. I think we should consider the possibility Doctor Bashir wasn't the target."

"I don't need you to tell me how to do my job, Orphan."

"Yes sir, of course." Giel shifts gear, his speech gaining a little more authority. "But I think, perhaps, you want to keep an _open_ _mind_."

Pa'dar blinks. He's reacting to a signal; a shibboleth all Cardassians understand.

"An open mind is, after all," continues Giel, "the essence of intellect."

A muscle in Pa'dar's face twitches. _He's going to need a moment to digest this_. Bashir fights the urge to smile. _A hesitant boy dressed up in Central Command uniform has just pulled rank on the First Gul of Lakat…_

… _he's just spoken the watchword of the Obsidian Order._

"This is a civic matter," hisses Pa'dar.

"Of course it is sir," says Giel, maintaining his cover. "Who said it wasn't?"

Bashir keeps his expression neutral.

"If there's no reason to detain the Doctor further sir, you can release him." Giel has the Gul's complete attention now. "I'll escort him back to the hospital."

Pa'dar's reptilian tongue flickers mutely across his lips. He knows as well as Bashir does: the Order come at night and without warning. They take everyone and about where the men, women and children go there is only silence.

Only a fool gets in their way.

"It was a Federation beam." The Gul pulls the doctor up onto his tiptoes in a last ditch attempt to get answers. "Wasn't it?"

Bashir mimics Giel's deferential manner. "I wouldn't know sir. It all happened so fast sir! Am I under arrestsir?"

Pa'dar's jaw tightens. "Not yet."

Letting him go, he takes a holographic card from his pocket. He hands it over with an expression approaching sympathy.

"I don't think you know how dangerous your situation is Doctor. Or if you do know…then you don't understand. You aren't nearly scared enough. Now, if you recollect anything, anything at all…you let me know."

Bashir waits for the Gul to exit around the corner and get out of view.

He lets the card flutter to the ground.

"Come on," he says, pulling his combadge from his chest.

"What?" says Giel. "Wait, where are we going?"

But Bashir is already on the move. Heading out of the café with the boy in tow: down to the jetty, down to where the river bends. To where, centuries ago, the port used to be. There are no ships on the water. Not anymore.

 _Not on the water._ _But in the sky..._

Reaching the end of the jetty, he clambers onto the wooden railings. As Giel catches up with him, Bashir stretches his arm over the edge. His combadge rests in the palm of his hand. Signalling out into space. Betraying him to listening ears. Giving him away.

His Starfleet insignia traced in gold.

He tries to convince himself it doesn't matter. That it's just a badge. Just another piece of a past life to throw away. Another piece of himself to be gotten rid of.

 _I can't keep it. I_ _can't_ _._

And yet, as the seconds pass, he remains frozen there. His hand stretched out over the water. Lakat is cooler now, quieter in the twilight. Waves lap softly against the jetty. Cardassian cormorants, fat and green, circle and caw above. An evening breeze and a taste of salt blow in from the open sea.

Then, out of the blue, the combadge chimes.

Both Bashir and Giel jump at the noise. A channel long closed has just been opened.

"O'Brien to Bashir."

Three simple words. The ones the doctor wants to hear more than anything else in the universe. Words that mean help; words that mean home. Familiar words whispered urgently in English. Said by an unfamiliar voice.

"O'Brien to Bashir."

He doesn't answer.

"Julian, it's Molly. Molly O'Brien. Please respond."

 _Molly!_ Bashir's mind struggles to morph the little girl he knew into the grown woman's voice. _She'd be what…around thirty now?_

"Are you there? Answer me. Please."

 _It could be! It could really be her!_ An echo of the closest thing to family Bashir has ever known, right there in the palm of his hand! Calling to him.

"Open the channel," she says. "There isn't much time."

 _No, there isn't_ , whispersthe voice in Bashir's head, stopping him from tapping the badge. _This is a coincidence_ , it says, _and we don't trust coincidences, do we Doctor? They're probably tracking you, right now. Honing in while you listen._

"Let me help you Julian. It's me. It's Molly."

The voice in his head scoffs. _Even if it is the Chief's daughter: what do you know about her? That when she was seven she had pigtails and played with toy soldiers? You don't know where her loyalties lie. Or what she's capable of._

 _"_ I'm on a Starship in orbit. Our orders are to kill you. Please open the channel, it's secure. Trust me."

Bashir wants to. God, does he want to. But somehow, even after all these years, he's still unsure: who to let in, who to trust. Who to love. He still just doesn't know.

There was a time, when he was younger, that he might have leapt in and hoped for the best. A time when he'd been open to trust everyone - up to a point.

But he's older now. Faith doesn't come easily anymore.

"Open the **damn** channel Julian."

 _Two minutes of a one-way conversation and already she's annoyed at me._ _Certainly sounds like an O'Brien_. He closes his hand around the badge to quieten the temptation.

"What is she saying?" asks Giel in Cardassian.

"What I want to hear."

On the other side of the channel, Molly O'Brien (if it really _is_ Molly O'Brien) exhales. "Okay. Then just listen. I've told them the scanners are fritzing because of the Cardassian defence shield. That I can't isolate your bio-signature. That'll buy you twenty-four hours. But it's not only you Julian. We've orders to kil-"

With force, Bashir hurls his combadge out as far as he can into the river. Jumping down from the railings, he moves away quickly, striding across the promenade.

Giel trails after him. "Where are we going?"

"To find a tailor."

"A tailor?!" He stops in his tracks. "Doctor! Someone tried to kill you!"

Bashir keeps walking.

"That was someone on a Starship; wasn't it?" Giel hurries to catch him up. "There's a Federation Starship, in orbit, illegally, around my planet! A Starship that I think, in all likelihood, is here to kill you…and you… you want to go find a tailor!? Why? Tell me."

The doctor doesn't say anything.

"Stop. Tell me." Giel is getting angrier. "I said stop! Don't you ignore me!" He grabs Bashir's arm and jerks him around. "I won't be ignored. I won't be left behind. Why do you want to find a tailor? We're not going one step further until you tell me."

The boy's hand hovers over his disruptor, ready to draw.

Bashir faces him down. _He doesn't belong to them_ , whispers the voice in his head. _Not yet. He won't do it. I'm sure._

"Why do you want to go find a tailor? I won't ask again Human."

 _I'm pretty sure he won't do it. Fairly sure. Probably._

Bashir tugs at his ruined clothing, shredded by splinters of glass and covered in blue splodges of kanar. "Do you know how much this shirt cost?"

"The shirt-?" Giel stops. His bluff called, he lets go of the doctor and lets out an exasperated sigh. "Fine. You're going to find a tailor. But I'm coming with you."

The Englishman gives him a broad smile. "Good thinking. You could definitely use a new suit."


	4. The Constant Gardener

Three years earlier.

Elim Garak stands by a hospital bedside. He's long beyond hope.

Laid out in front of him is what's left of Julian Bashir; catatonic and hollow. The human's mouth is clamped open; thick tubes run down his throat. All around the medical machines drone; they work constantly, pushing air in and out of his lungs.

Five years after Section 31 left him for dead on Memory Alpha, Bashir can no longer breathe by himself.

Garak looks at the blank, white-washed walls. Visiting the patient is a grim ritual; what he does every Friday. His thoughts wander as they always do, back to the same old puzzle. Back to the same questions he's turned over again and again, never quite able to answer.

 _Why did you back off? Pull away? Why could you go so far but then no further? Why did we stop meeting for lunch?_

 _Talk to me. Tell me something. Anything._

 _Say anything._

 _Please._

Bashir dribbles down his chin and onto his shirt. Garak dabs the saliva up. _How I've grown to hate Fridays…_

A worn through teddy bear sits on the bedside table. With care, the Cardassian picks the strange, fragile creature up. Repeatedly patched, stitched and re-stuffed, very little of the original Kukalaka now remains.

He places him into his owner's arms.

"I have a present for you." Reaching into his tailoring bag, Garak takes out a small pot of white English Roses shipped (with no small difficulty) from Earth. "Ta-da!"

He waits.

 _Nothing. No reaction. No change._

 _There never is._ Bashir is as unresponsive as the day he took him into his care. He lies there placidly; drooling, with dull unblinking eyes.

 _Is any part of the Doctor still in there?_

Garak doesn't know.

What he does know however, is how to make a choice.

And that sometimes, you have to change to survive. Under no illusions the human will ever forgive him; Garak chooses to save whatever is left of Julian Bashir.

"There's a new treatment." He retrieves the consultant's report from his bag. "Reaccelerated neural pathway formation. That is, I believe, the medical term."

He doesn't see the patient's fingers twitch and cling ever tighter to Kukalaka.

"It's a form of genetic engin-." He stops and searches for a phrase he can live with. "It's a form of re-coding."


	5. The Third Man

In his lover's apartment, high in the hills surrounding Lakat, a different doctor wakes up. He fights against consciousness. His green, unearthly eyes flicker rapidly. A dull sound breaks through. Someone shouting from outside. Someone banging on the door.

Doctor Kelas Parmak moans softly. He's back in the present and he really doesn't want to be. Outstretched on a mottled grey sofa, his vision clears quicker than his head. A hypo-spray and two empty bottles of kanar lie within easy reach on the gelat table.

"Garak! Let me in!" The noise at the door continues. "Garak!"

Parmak ignores it. _What does it matter? What does anything matter?_ _My Love is dead._

His thoughts struggle through a lilac haze of alcohol and triptacederine. _There was something I meant to do._ It was important; he remembered that much. _Someone I have to go tell. Someone we hadn't seen in a long time. Someone else who Garak-_

"Kelas?" The voice outside changes tack. It's gentler now. "Are you in there? Kelas?" Hearing his name, the Cardassian stumbles across the room. As reality whirls hypnotically around him, he opens the door.

 _Doctor Julian Bashir._ _Of course it is. How could it ever be anyone else? The_ _other_ _doctor, the_ _first_ _doctor. Kind, stubborn and infinitely oblivious._ _Looking like hell and stood on the doorstep._

"Where is he Kelas?" says Bashir. "I need to see him".

The two doctors are exactly the same height. Their eyes are exactly the same shade of green. Bashir has never noticed - why would he? Parmak has though. He blinks at the other doctor. "How did you know?"

"How did I know what?" The Human is already inside; a slight young man trails after him. "Garak!" Bashir shouts, moving through the apartment. "Garak! I don't have time for games! GARAK!" He disappears into the bedroom.

Parmak shakes his head to try and clear it. "What?" he says bewildered.

There's a cough from behind him.

"Montag Giel." The young man extends a clawed hand to introduce himself.

Parmak gapes at him.

"GAAAAAAARK!" Bashir's distant shout echoes around the apartment.

"Um," says Giel. He shifts awkwardly. "I need a new suit?"

 _Where the hell is he?_ Bashir's anger rises. _How can he not be here when I need him._ He returns to the living room from his search, finally convinced the tailor isn't in the apartment. "Where is he Kelas? Where's Garak? Please. I need to see him. I need help."

"Julian," says Parmak gently. "Garak's dead."

The voice in his head laughs. "No he isn't!" he says incredulously.

Parmak sits heavily on the sofa. His shoulders sag.

Bashir studies the Cardassian's numb expression a moment. "He's dead?" he says sceptically. Parmak nods. "Since when?"

"Today."

"Was it the Federation?" says Giel.

The suggestion surprises Parmak. "No, a revenge killing. Some deranged old Glinn; a former officer of Dukat's. He'd threatened us before but Garak never would take him seriously." His gaze focuses on the cut on Giel's forehead. "Why did you think it would be the Federation?"

"This is ridiculous!" Bashir throws his arms in the air. "This is Garak! I don't want to speak to him in three years. Now I do, suddenly, he'sdead! Unbelievable! Look Kelas: if he can't face what he did to me, fine, but he could at least -"

Parmak lets out an inhuman wail. "My Love! My World!" Breaking down, he sobs.

Bashir stands still, stunned into silence.

"He's gone! My Love!"

Giel inches around the weeping doctor and over to Bashir. "What do we do?" he whispers.

 _We help,_ says the voice in his head. Pushing aside his own feelings; his own confusion, Bashir moves to the sofa. He sits and lightly rests his hand on Parmak's shoulder.

"I'm so sorry Kelas."

"You know Julian…we are very much alike…"

"Is there anything we need to do?" He tries to busy Parmak and distract him. "Any papers to sign? Any arrangements to be made?"

He shakes his head. "I've contacted the Oralian Priest. The funeral is at midnight. She'll have to use the state liturgy inside the Cathedral but," he swallows, "at the gravesite, outside at least we can follow Hebitian scripture."

"Midnight tonight?" Bashir glances at the clock on the wall. It's 20:55. "So soon…"

"Cardassians bury their dead quickly Doctor"

"Yes I know." The memory of the rotting bodies resurfaces. "Because of the heat."

"It's 19:15," says Giel.

"What?"

The boy gestures to his watch. "That clock's stopped. It's 19:15. Not 20:55."

 _20:55. Why is that familiar? 20:55?_ The pieces click in Bashir's mind. _Twenty fifty-five!_ He leaps to his feet. "Twenty fifty-five!" he cries. "Kelas! **Twenty fifty** **-** **five**!"

"I don't understand?"

"It's stopped at twenty fifty-five!" he says, as if this explains everything. "The time of our first appointment! The first time Garak waited for me, all those years ago on Deep Space Nine. It's a signal! A way of telling me there's more going on than meets the eye. I knew he wasn't dead. Kelas: he isn't!"

Giel is sceptical. "That's it? A stopped clock. That's all the evidence you have?"

"I have Garak! Half a lifetime of him!" Energised now, he lands back on the sofa with Parmak. "The Federation tried to kill me today."

The Cardassian's mouth opens.

"I thought I knew why; but now?" _It's not only you._ _That's what Molly had said._ "There must be something else. Something in the past. Something that involved me and involved Garak. He knew he was next and he's gone to ground."

"But I saw-." Parmak's voice breaks. He looks away. "Oh Julian. I wanted to spare you this." His hand trembling, he takes a data-rod from his pocket. "There was a security tape."

"Show me."

Parmak goes to the plastic Holograph and inserts the rod. The street entrance of a tailor's shop is projected into the room. He flicks a switch. The recording begins to move.

 _Garak_ _._ Bashir's heart beats faster. _There's Garak._ Shutting up shop and heading out for lunch. _He looks... old._ _Much older than the last time I saw him._

The tailor's hands quiver with age as he smooths the creases in his suit. He taps his ivory walking stick on the cobblestones. Hunched over, he moves forward a few wobbly paces and ghosts in between the two doctors.

"For Dukat!" A wild, unkempt Cardassian runs straight through Bashir.

Parmak closes his eyes. He knows what's coming next.

The attacker lunges and knifes Garak in the throat. "For Dukat!" There's a struggle. "For Dukat! For Duuukkkat!" Garak, somehow, now has a disruptor. He shoots, close range. His attacker screams and vaporises in agony. Holding his neck, he collapses. Blood pools onto the street and runs down into the gutter.

Reaching out as he dies, a little over dramatically, he whispers, "Doctor…"

Static envelops the scene and the holo-projection ends.

"It's a fake." Bashir has never been so sure of anything in his life. "I know it is."

"There were witnesses," says Parmak, only now opening his eyes.

"Did you see the body?"

"No, but-"

"He's had us here before Kelas. He's faked his own death before. Remember? After the Bacco assassination." He gives him his patented boyish smile. "It's the same lie twice."

Giel inspects the data-rod. "If it's a forgery, it's a good one. This is a genuine optolythic Government data-rod. You can only use them once. They're almost impossible to obtain, even for official recordkeeping. Getting one illegally would be…messy."

Without a word, Bashir stands and moves to the wooden cabinet.

"Doctor?"

Pulling the top draw completely out, he tips it over. A jumble of past lives hits the floor. _Gardening books; sewing needles; a Memory Scanner._ _I know what being tortured by one of them feels like._ He puts it aside. _A state dinner invitation; designs for suits; a mass of customer receipts…_

"Look," he instructs Giel.

The boy gapes at the mess. "For what?"

"I don't know _,_ something. _"_ He roots through the objects, tossing them aside one after another. "He'll have left behind something. Some sort of clue." His eyes scan the room. "Something like that!"

Hidden away underneath the gelat table is a large, red dispatch box. Bashir blows away a layer of dust. The crest of the Legate's Ministry is embossed on the lock.

 _This is it!_ _This is what I'm looking for._ _Inside will be evidence. Or Information. Official papers perhaps? Maybe even state secrets! Garak leaving a trail of crumbs. A clue as to what's going on._

"Hand me that darning needle."

Giel does as he's told. "You can't pick that!" He laughs as the doctor begins to jiggle the lock. "There's no point even trying. That's a tripartite microsealing mechanism. It's incredibly complex."

With an electronic trill, the box springs open.

"Oh. How did you manage that?"

"Books," says Bashir ignoring the question. "Just… books." Around forty, neatly stacked with their spines toward him.

"Books?" Giel is already at his side, excitedly humming around him to get at the collection. "Earth books?"

"Mostly." He thumbs across the titles. _Sayak's new Enigma Tale, three volumes of Preloc's poetry,_ _Doctor Zhivago,_ _Dracula_ , _more Cardassian poetry._ The Secret Garden! He hasn't read that since he was a child. _Where on earth did Garak get that?_

He takes it out and leafs through the pages: Garak's handwriting is on every one. His questions; his thoughts; points for discussion. References to human history he needs clarifying.

 _This can't be it?_ Bashir's spirits drop. _There must be something else here_. _Some message I'm missing._

He picks up 'Crime and Punishment'. _Same story; Garak's covered it in notes. And he_ certainly had a lot of opinions about this one. On the last page, **"RIDICULOUS"** is etched in black Cardassian capital letters.

Beneath, the words 'Is it though?' are shakily written in faint pencil.

 _Ah-ha!_ Something catches his eye. The corner of a paper envelope peeking like a green shoot through the volumes. He pulls it out. "This is it Giel!" He waves the envelope in the air. "This is what we're looking for. The game's afoot!"

"Mmm-huh," says Giel, not the least bit interested. He's focused on the books, on his new found treasure. "Are there any James Bonds?"

"I wouldn't have thought so." Bashir opens the envelope.

It's a written message. One hidden away among books full of unanswered questions and planned out, longed-for conversations. Books collected through the years and kept only in hope. Long after the reasonable course of action was to stop; to walk away.

 _ **To My Dear Doctor -**_

 _ **For when you wake up**_

 _ **\- Garak**_

Bashir's heart skips a beat.

"Julian?" Parmak watches him with wide, green Cardassian eyes.

"He was keeping them in case I…" He trails off. For the first time, he considers the possibility that Garak may really, actually, truly be dead. "Kelas, he was…"

He moves to show the other doctor the message.

"Awesome!" exclaims Giel. "This one!" He rushes over to Bashir, his chosen book in his hand. "This is the one I want to read first." He pauses. "Doctor?" He pokes him with his finger. "Doctor?"

"Wwh- what?"

Giel holds the book out like a child unable to open a chocolate wrapper. On the cover, a Martian Tripod stomps across London, platoons of tiny humans fleeing at its feet. In the foreground, an Englishman is frozen mid-zap, skeleton visible through his bowler hat.

"It needs translating." The boy waits expectantly. "Doctor?" His eyes flick from Bashir to Parmak to the message. He tilts his head. "This Garak, who was he, to you, exactly?"

"He was ... my friend."

"Your 'friend'?"

"Yes, my friend," snaps Bashir. "What of it?"

Giel takes a step back.

"He said doctor," says Parmak softly. "As he died, he asked for…"

"He meant you Kelas. He was asking for you."

"Thank you Julian. But no. No Doctor, I really don't think he was."

The transporter room of the USS Mayflower. Alone in the gloom of the night shift and wracked with guilt, Molly O'Brien feeds another error code into the scanner terminal. _This can't go on. I'm betraying my Captain; my ship; my people._

 _I can't hide Julian's bio-signature forever._

 _There's still a chance the Cardassians could detect us, even with the cloak. The longer we stay in orbit…the longer_ _I_ _make_ _us_ _have_ _to stay in orbit… the longer we're all at risk._

 _I don't know what to do…_

She reaches beneath her collar and takes out a pendant. It's Bajoran; the one Kai Opaka once gave her father as a gift 'for his little girl'. Definitely religious; definitely against regulations. A sacrament to the Prophets kept hidden under her uniform.

"La'por I'lanu kos," she prays. _Hear me._ _Guide me. What should I do?_ She clasps the pendant tighter. _I still can't find my path._

A proverb wanders into her mind. _Tesra veldor impatri bren, impatri sten_. Her stomach knots. _A person who belongs everywhere, belongs nowhere..._

 _The station, Bajor, Earth, Enterprise. And now here. Home has always been where ever I was right then. But there are cracks between the cultures…and I've fallen into them…_

 _I don't know what to do…because I don't know who I am._

 _I don't know where my loyalty should lie._

An old, familiar frustration builds inside her. _Why can't this be_ _simple_ _? I joined Starfleet to make this simple!_

 _On a starship, your duty is_ _supposed_ _to be clear. There's the uniform. There's the mission. Your loyalty is to your Captain and your crew. There isn't supposed to be any conflict, no niggling doubts or alien ideals. Not here._

 _On a starship, life is supposed to be straightforward. Life is supposed to make sense._

And it had made sense to her…

…upuntil this morning. Up until the name 'Julian Bashir' had shown up as a target on their mission briefing.

 _I have to help him._ She sighs _. I_ _am_ _helping him. He was an O'Brien once. He is family_. _And_ _nothing_ _is more important than family._

 _S_ he hesitates. _But I can't keep stalling the mission. It's putting the ship at risk. And I can't keep lying to the Captain._

"La'por I'lanu kos," she whispers again. "Hear me, please. Help me. Should I go see the Captain? Tell her I knew Julian when I was a child?" Molly pauses. "Nicholson is a good woman…she'll listen."

She closes her eyes.

 _Answer me. Help me, please. I submit to your will. I submit to the path the Prophets have laid out …_

The bell of the Great Cathedral tolls as Bashir pads through the graveyard. _It's Midnight._

 _It's the witching hour._ His stomach lurches at the thought. _It's t_ _he time when ghosts walk abroad._

 _You don't believe in all that superstitious nonsense_ , says the voice in his head. _You're an enlightened 24_ _th_ _Century man._

"I'm an enlightened 24th Century man," repeats Bashir out loud. But he isn't reassured. First, he's alone and second, he's lost. All his senses stand on edge.

He'd left Parmak and Giel on the Cathedral steps, preparing to file in through the main gate with the rest of the Cardassian mourners. Aliens were not allowed in. The clerics had made that very clear.

Parmak had been outraged for him: protesting loudly and drawing the attention of two nearby deputies. The Englishman had smiled, ever-pleasantly and said he really didn't mind. Really. He'd go around the back and meet them outside after the service for the burial.

So now here he was. Taking a moonlight stroll across an alien graveyard, surrounded only by the dead. A shiver tingles down his spine.

 _Where was the_ _bloody_ _gardener?_ _The Oralian Priest said he'd be around here._ _He's supposed to be with me. He's supposed to show me the way to the gravesite._ Bashir's feet crunch from grass onto a gravel path. Up ahead, a gate cuts through a high stone wall.

 _I'll try through there._

The gate swings open with a yawning creak. _A garden._ He enters. _A quad lawn enclosed by walls of silver ivy and the Cathedral's tallest tower_. Part way up, an arched window has been left temptingly open. A curious, blue light leaks from within.

He moves closer, treading carefully in the darkness through the garden's carnivorous plants and hissing pools of liquid mercury.

"The window isn't all that high," he says. "I can make that."

 _Probably._

Searching for a footing on the tower's stonework, for a hold on the ivy, he starts to clamber. It's an effort. Resting a moment, he looks down.

"Okay," he breathes quickly, "maybe it is, just a little bit high."

Stretching his fingertips, he finds the window's ledge and pulls himself up to see something no other human being ever will…

…the inside of The Great Cathedral of Cardassia.

From within, a song begins. A single harmony breaking the silence of the night. The sound of women's voices singing an alien psalm. Many voices obscured into one; tumbled over each other, twisting like a murmuration of birds. Some jubilant, some sorrowful: all blurred in the mass.

They're praying. To who and for what the doctor cannot tell. The words he can translate but this… this he cannot understand. This sound. It is infinity. It is the Cardassian soul. Echoed down across centuries it breathes through the cloister walls and out into the garden.

"Agh-"

Losing his grip on the ledge, Bashir slips to the ground. His hands scrape down the stone, grazing on a Cardassian seraphim chiselled from the rock. The tower is covered in them: a multitude of reptilian angels swirled into the architecture. They go up as far as he can see; an unearthly tangle of wings and scales, climbing through the silver ivy and grasping at the stars.

They are a sight so plainly other to him, so… _inhuman_. And yet they are, the doctor decides, undeniably beautiful.

The psalm ends as abruptly as it began. Silence envelops the garden again. And, quite suddenly, Bashir feels absolutely alone.

A twig snaps behind him.

He turns. "Who's there? Answer me!"

No one. He can see no one. But the garden is shrouded in darkness; in long shadows that transform in his mind as the wind moves through the trees into an entire squadron of Starfleet assassins.

He breathes quickly; alert, on edge. Listening.

 _Nothing._ He fights for calm. _I'm tired. And heaven knows, I'm afraid. Maybe, maybe I imagined it, maybe -_

With a twanging cry, a startled Eel-bird slithers into flight.

 _There_ _is_ _someone there! Over by the archway!_ A Cardassian hovering in the shadows.

"Who's there?" shouts Bashir. "Show yourself!" His eyes grasp for details in the gloom: the outline of a spade; the shape of a watering can. And now, as high above the clouds transit across the moon, the dark silhouette of a face…

The Eel-bird shrieks again.

It's the gardener.

Bashir blinks. "You bastard."

"Can I help you?"

"You bastard. You let me think -." His words are strangled by his indignation. "And Parmak! He's in there, right now! Thinking you're...," His voice breaks. "When I found the books I really thought this time you might be-." He stops. "You bastard," he says again.

"Are you here for a funeral?"

"Yes," says Bashir. "Yours."

"Oh?" The patented half smile appears first. Then, his features emerging like the Cheshire Cat, Elim Garak steps into the light. "I'll come with you," he says, delighted by the thought.


	6. Ill Met By Moonlight

The graveyard of The Great Cathedral at night. Atop his own headstone, next to an open (but not empty) grave, sits the very much alive Elim Garak. _Behaving himself_ , notes Bashir. _For the moment_ …

Blood pours down from the Cardassian's mouth. _Where is the bloody medi-scanner?_ With Giel's help, the doctor roots through the borrowed medkit on the ground. It belongs to the clerics and is completely disordered. _There must at least be a scanner!_

Garak lets out a loud, impatient sigh.

 _Don't you fucking dare._ Bashir shoots him a look of pure menace.

The Cardassian digs his walking stick into the grass. The moon is brighter now. The doctor can see the headstone clearly for the first time. The inscription reads:

 **HERE LIES GARAK.**

"What a fittingepitaph," says Bashir acidly as he finally uncovers a scanner.

"Do you like it? I chose it myself- Ouch!"

"You _,"_ he says, gripping the Cardassian's jaw still to scan. "Do. Not. Talk _._ _"_

The funeral had not gone well. There had been 'A Scene'. Garak had made his entrance and Parmak - a man of hitherto infinite gentleness and understanding - had punched him. What followed was a full blown Cardassian fight. Teeth and tails. No rules: no holds barred.

 _I did_ _try_ _to stop it,_ Bashir tells himself. _In the beginning._ _Tried to mediate; tried to calm Kelas down._

In the beginning. But then, trapped in his weeping lover's headlock, Garak had made a remark. A proud, unrepentant remark. _Fucking rage-inducing! In the way only_ _he_ _bloody could be!_

And Bashir had joined in on Parmak's side.

All three men had ended up in the open grave with the coffin, covered in clayey soil. The peace-making doctors versus Garak; two against one. Scuffling in the moonlight under the gaze of Giel, the Priest and the rest of the bewildered funeral party.

As he continues to scan the Cardassian's bloodied mouth, Bashir can't escape the feeling the bastard had loved every minute of it.

"If I evershow up to your funeral again Garak, you better be dead. You better be dead or 'do no harm' or not, I'll make you that way myself."

"Oh, I don't think I'll bother having a funeral now when I do really go." He gestures to the open grave. "After that, anything else would be an anti-climax."

"It was brilliant," blurts out Giel, unable to contain his enthusiasm any longer. "You strolled into your own funeral; just like that! Like something out of a book!"

Garak beams at his new admirer.

"And then the fight! And the holo-recording! On an authentic data-rod too; how did you manage that? Had me totally fooled. Who's in the coffin? Assuming there actually is someone in the coffin! Is there someone in the coffin?"

"Giel," says Bashir in the tone of voice Captain Sisko used to use on him.

The boy stops talking. Garak smirks.

The doctor snaps off the medi-scanner. "Fractured jaw," he diagnoses, without the slightest trace of sympathy.

"I never knew Parmak had it in him." Garak adopts a wheezy, grandfatherly air as Bashir runs a dermal regenerator along his jawline. "Let this be a lesson to you Montag Giel. Perhaps the most valuable one I can teach you…"

Giel listens intently.

"Never underestimate what someone will or won't do, if… _pushed_ just a little. If they're angry enough; or scared enough."

"Or provoked enough," says Bashir.

"You can know someone, oh _, for years,_ and not even begin to fathom what they're capable of. Where their _natural_ limits lie. When it comes to people, any sort of people; Cardassians, Vulcans, Bajorans, Humans - it makes no difference. Always keep your guard up and your _mind_ _open_."

"W-What?" Giel fumbles. "Errr…what? Sorry, what did you say?"

"An open mind is important." Garak is ever pleasant. "Wouldn't you agree?"

Bashir keeps his expression neutral as Giel struggles to remember his Order training on how to signal back. "Oh! Right, um yes; yes, of course," he says. "I agree. An open mind is, after all, the essence of intellect." He hesitates. "Isn't it…?"

"What an _insightful_ young man. How _nice_ that we've met-"

"There," interrupts Bashir. He flicks off the dermal regenerator. "All done." He interposes himself between Giel and Garak, dumping the medkit into the younger Cardassian's arms and turning him around. "Right Giel, take the medkit back to the refectory."

"What! But I've only just come back from there!"

"Yes well," he ushers him away from Garak's clutches, "they won't let me in, will they? I'd have to go all the way around the garden and yell at the Cathedral door." He pats him encouragingly on the back. "Off you pop, there's a good chap."

Grumbling under his breath about, "not being an errand boy, stupid human, thinks he can tell me what to do," Giel nevertheless begins to troop toward the Cathedral.

Bashir watches him go.

 _We're alone._ The seconds echo by. He can't turn around; can't face Garak and the conversation he's run from for the last three years. _But it's there; that conversation._ Bashir holds his breath. _I can feel it._ _Waiting. Hanging in the silent night air. Unfinished business. The aftermath of the choice Garak made and…_

And something else. _The choice_ _I_ _once made. To back off; to go no further. To stop meeting so often for lunch. I had to..._

"He does it well you know," says Garak. "The naïve young man who couldn't harm a Halkan fly. Not quite as well as you used to. But then, you had more to hide."

"I don't know what on earth you're talking about."

"Don't you?" The old Cardassian considers this. "Perhaps not." With a groan, he reaches for his walking stick. "Youth, Doctor, is a _very_ good disguise. No one takes you seriously." He hobbles forward a few shaky steps. "Your teeth haven't come through yet."

Bashir watches him warily. _He moved quick enough during the fight._ "As good a disguise as old age?"

"Not quite." The corner of Garak's eyes twinkle. "You know Doctor, the accidental death rate for ex-Legates has been markedly high in recent years. Since the Vorlem coup actually. It really is quite alarming." He lets out a rasping, grandfatherly chuckle. "But of course I'm unlikely to go swimming in the rapids or climbing cliff faces, am I? Being so old and…"

"Defanged?"

"Precisely." Garak reaches to place an affectionate hand on his shoulder.

"Don't." Bashir pulls away.

The silence is back again.

Garak is at a loss as to how to fill it. He reverts to the only sure way he's ever found of getting through. He gives him a mystery: the doctor never could resist a mystery. "I faked my own death. Don't you want to know why?"

"The Federation want to kill you."

Denied his big reveal, Garak visibly deflates. "Oh…you know already," he says unhappily. "Ah!" Revitalising, he moves toward him with gusto. "But do you know," he pauses, letting the question expand to fill the silent air, " _why_ the Federation want to kill me?"

"Listen," says Bashir, not in the mood to play, "just cut the crap and tell me."

"You're no fun anymore," he sulks. "Perhaps I'll wait for young Giel to get back and -"

"Garak!"

The Cardassian becomes deadly serious. "Tell me Doctor; what do you know about a Romulan Senator named Vreenak?"

"Vreenak!" That name is part of History now; the 24th Century's own Archduke Ferdinand. "The Vreenak? The assassinated Ambassador?"

"You remember what happened to him?"

"Well of course I do," he says impatiently. "He was killed by the Dominion. His ship was sabotaged, blown up." He pauses. _Blown up…shortly after it left Deep Space Nine. Oh no._ He sees the truth in the assassin in front of him. "You?" he asks.

"Me," says Garak.

Bashir is appalled. "How could you work for the Dominion!"

"Don't be a _fool_ Doctor. Everything I've taught you and you're still a prisoner of that _insidious_ dogma. Always revert to that smug, sanctimonious viewpoint at the first opportunity. Why don't you try looking a little closer to home?"

"Wehired you." He steps closer to Garak as the realisation dawns. "The Federation." His mind turns, working through the rest of the puzzle. "Vreenak's death gave the Romulans a reason to go to war. To come in on our side."

"Very good Doctor. Now, without that event, without the Romulans…"

"…we would have lost." Bashir follows his old teacher's lead. "The entire Quadrant would have fallen to the Dominion."

"Planet after planet," says Garak. "Cardassia, Bajor, Earth."

Bashir sits heavily on a gravestone. _This is…this is scandalous!_ He can't quite believe it. He needs to say it slowly and out loud to make it real. "The Federation conspired to murder a Romulan Ambassador."

"Not at the start. The original plot was only to trick the Romulans with faked evidence of a Dominion invasion."

"Only!"

"However," says Garak as he starts to pace, coiling in dangerous circles around the doctor; "once they'd committed to the goal. Once they'd done one _ugly thing_ , one _necessary thing_. Once they'd clambered out of paradise and got _their own_ hands _dirty_ _for a change_ -"

Bashir realises which version of Garak he's alone with in the moonlight. He tenses.

The Son of Tain stills. A blink and The Tailor is back, polite and ever-pleasant. "Well," he says, "this sort of business has to be seen through. You have to cut the loose threads."

"And that's what's happening now? You're a loose thread. They're silencing the witnesses?"

Garak sits on the gravestone opposite him. "Needless to say, this would all be extremely embarrassing for the Federation and Starfleet if it got out. Can you imagine? Murder! Fraud? Lies! Doesn't quite fit with the image does it?"

 _No it doesn't, whispers_ the voice in his head. _A lot of things don't._ _You realised that a long time ago._ _Even Jules, who couldn't tell a cat from a dog, realised that._

"But I wasn't-." Bashir stops. He lets the rest of the sentence run silently in his mind. _I wasn't involved. I didn't know. Why are they trying to kill me too?_ _I wasn't part of it._

 _Was I…?_

He thinks back to the past; back to the station. Everything that happened in the weeks before Vreenak's death. _Sloan and what he did to me. Sisko's visions. Flying a spitfire over the Channel with Miles._ He can still remember the ten digit access code for the holosuite door. _Quark getting stabbed in that bar fight. An order that felt…unusual._

 _That felt wrong._

"You weren't what?" asks Garak.

"Nothing," he replies. "You said Starfleet were involved. The Admiralty knew? A Starfleet officer ran the mission?"

"Yes."

"Who?" His voice shakes a little.

Garak clams up. He's shattered many of Bashir's illusions over the years; but the always good, always noble Captain Sisko is one fiction he'd gladly let the doctor keep. "My memory isn't what it used to be."

"Who was it Garak? The truth. I want to know."

"No Doctor," he says, not unkindly, "I don't think you do." He nods his attention to a figure behind him. "Our young friend is coming back."

Giel approaches across the graveyard; minus the medkit but still grumbling. He stops. There's a murder of fanged eel-birds in his path. "Shoo, shoo" he says, waving his arms.

The eel-birds ignore him. One lets out a loud, unfazed yawn.

Getting up, Garak glides vampirically to the boy's aid. Ever pleasant and attentive. All smiles. The eel-birds bolt, sensibly, away from him…

…and straight toward Giel, enveloping him in a storm of feathers and slime. "Argh! Get off, ah. No! Urgh." He shudders. Trying to recover, his grey face flushed blue with embarrassment he smooths out his clothing. "Um…thank you Mister Garak."

"You're welcome. And, it's just Garak." His hand slithers up the fabric of Giel's sleeve, coming to rest on his shoulder. "Plain, simple G-" Garak stops. He's noticed something. "Doctor: why is this boy wearing my waistcoat?"

"Ah," says Bashir. "Well," he coughs. "We were at your flat, you see, and Parmak said-"

"You hadn't even buried me and you were _divvying up_ my wardrobe?"

"My clothes were covered in kanar after the shooting," says Giel.

Garak's focus snaps from Bashir to the boy. "Shooting?"

"The Federation are trying to kill the Doctor," Giel helpfully informs Garak before Bashir can stop him. "We were in this café and WHAM! Phaser fire everywhere. That's how I got this cut on my forehead." He shows him the scar. "It was definitely a Starfleet assassin. Wasn't it Doctor? You said it was."

 _Oh God._ Bashir holds his palm over his eyes. _Please shut up._

"Doctor?" Giel queries on. "What's the matter?"

" _So_ _!_ The Federation are trying to kill _you_." Garak advances on him. "When were you planning to share that particular piece of information?" He pauses. "You know Giel, someone should do a study."

"A study?"

"To figure out why some people can't bring themselves to trust anyone, even when-"

"Don't push me," threatens Bashir.

His reptilian tongue clicks. "Why are they trying to kill you? You weren't involved."

"Involved in what?" asks Giel, completely lost.

Garak goes still. He stops blinking.

 _Oh no._ Bashir knows what that means. _Garak's Byzantine mind is in overdrive. Sifting, analysing. Constantly shifting._ _And, when it's done, you never quite know which one you're going to get_. "Garak? Talk to me. Tell me what's going on in there…."

Garak grapples for reason in the tangle of his mind. Many voices exist here. Many shades, many versions of himself. The Tailor, The Gardener and The Legate. The Son Of Tain and The Little Boy Locked In The Dark. They whisper over one another:

 _The Doctor wasn't involved, we made sure of that._ _Did we though?_ _He treated Quark after Tolar stabbed him. Shut up Elim: that wouldn't be enough. Maybe Sisko told him later?_

 _We_ _said_ _shut up. He never met Vreenak. Never knew about the forgery or the data-rod or…_

 _THE GEL_ _ **!**_ All the voices shout at once. _The price of the data-rod was eighty-five litres of biomimetic gel!_

 _Where did Sisko get it from? We don't know. We didn't ask. He can't have been so naïve as to get it from his own Chief Medical Officer! He can't have been stupid enough to leave a trail of orders and batch numbers and papers-_

 _But why now? After twenty years of letting sleeping dogs lie; why now are the loose threads a risk for Starfleet Command?_

 _The gel is the key._

 _Yes. It must be. The minor detail. The missing piece we forgot. It's the only part that involved the Doctor. It's out there somewhere. Sold on. Stamped with a DS9 batch number no doubt!_

 _After twenty years? Shut up Elim. But wouldn't someone have used it by now? For replication experiments or for biogenic weapons or for –_

 _ **Eurai**_ _ **!**_ _The biogenic attack last month! The source of the gel in the weapon was unknown!_

 _That's_ _why_ _now_ _._ Garak has his answer. _And, if it's right, say_ the voices, _they will never stop hunting us. Or the Doctor. They will never stop looking._

One of the voices grows louder now, shutting out all the others. _We need to disappear. Survive. Eliminate any risks. Cut the loose end._

 _No!_

 _Shut up Elim. We were going to do it anyway._ The rest of the voices are in agreement. _We'd have had to, eventually. He's working for the Order. Listening in. Reporting back. It is necessary. We need to do it._

 _Do it now. Do it quick._

Given total control, The Son of Tain bubbles up to the surface.

Bashir sees the transformation; feels the change in the sharpened night air. _Hell._ _Not_ _him_. _Not that one. "_ Garak?" he asks, unsure.

"Yes Doctor." The tip of a dagger concealed in his sleeve lining glints in the moonlight as Garak slowly edges it into his hand.

"Giel," says Bashir, keeping his voice even and clear, "come and stand behind me."

"Why?"

"Don't argue. Just come here."

Thwarted, The Son of Tain hisses as the boy moves out of reach. "You're a _fool_ , Doctor. You don't understand. You _never_ do."

Bashir positions himself protectively in front of Giel.

Another shift and a blink and it's The Tailor who resurfaces, ever-pleasant and agreeable. "My Dear Doctor," he laughs, "this is ridiculous!" His wooden smile doesn't quite reach his eyes. "You don't actually believe I would harm the boy, do you?"

Garak hobbles forward a step.

Bashir moves back a step; ushering Giel with him and keeping the distance between the two Cardassians the same.

 _Stalemate._ They study each other. _We're both waiting,_ Bashir has got a lot better at this game over the years. _Waiting, as good poker players wait. For the other man to show his hand; to fill the silence._

This time, it's Garak who speaks first. "The boy is working for The Order."

Bashir doesn't react. Doesn't move.

"You already _know_ _."_ Garak lets out a hollow laugh. "Why, of _course_ you do."

"Doctor?" says Giel, alarmed. The dagger is clearly visible now.

"It's okay," Bashir reassures him. "Don't run unless I tell you." Panic creeps into his voice. "You don't want to do this Garak."

"That's _right_. I don't. But _this_ _,_ " he swivels the blade, " _this_ is what you people always come to me for; isn't it? Leave it for Garak to do the _ugly thing_. The _necessary_ _thing_. The thing you don't want to know about. That you aren't capable of doing yourself, but will keep you alive."

"This isn't necessary. He's just a boy. He hasn't done anything yet."

"He's joined The Order."

"He deserves a chance."

"To spy on you? Betray you? Torture you? Chain you in a filthy cell and put a phaser bolt in your head when he's ordered? Oh, he _will_ Doctor. _Believe me_."

Giel edges closer to Bashir. "I wouldn't," he whispers.

"He will," says Garak. "Whether he realises it yet or not. He will do all those things, and more, if they tell him to. Because if he doesn't; if you've given him second thoughts. If you've _confused_ him; taught him to 'listen to his conscience' and 'do the right thing'… they will kill him. _Very_ slowly. This isn't Earth Doctor: this is Cardassia. The only saints here are martyrs."

"I can save him," pushes Bashir. _"_ I can _."_

"No." The Son of Tain tilts the dagger dangerously, ready to strike. "You can't".


	7. The Good Guys Close In

The doctor is not going to back down. He stays exactly where he is, between Giel and the son of Enabran Tain. This killer, this monster: this is Garak. This is his friend. A part of him at least. Bashir knows that. He's always known that.

 _But it is not all there is of Garak. Not by a long way._

Somewhere in there is The Gardener. And The Tailor. And Parmak's benevolent Legate, guiding his people to democracy. And somewhere in there is Elim - the little boy locked in the dark being murdered by his father, being moulded into a monster.

The doctor will never give up on him. He takes a step forward.

"I can save him. Let me help him. Let me try."

Bashir reaches out his hand.

"Give me the knife."

The Son Of Tain tenses and tightens his grip. This is an old fight. It's repeated on them down through the years. And the doctor with the wide green eyes has always had an unfair advantage.

"It's not too late." Bashir pushes his touch. "He still has a chance. Please. I can save him. I can."

"No," whispers Garak, "you can't." Nevertheless, he relaxes his hold on the knife. He begins to lower his hand.

 _The Son of Tain has gone back below._ Bashir exhales. _The danger has passed._

"He'll be okay, he'll be okay," he reassures Garak. His mind searches for something that will vouch for Giel's good character. "He likes James Bond," he offers.

"Yet anothergood reason to kill him."

At the same instant Bashir starts to smile…

... the world around him starts to fade.

" **NO!** " Garak grasps for him, but the loud and unstoppable hum of a Federation transporter has already kicked in; it resounds across the graveyard with a thunderous roar.

The doctor vanishes.

In the spot where he used to be, the last few bright particles of the beam dance and dissipate into the night. Giel is left all alone in the dark with the son of Enabran Tain. His protector suddenly gone, he panics.

By the time Bashir's mind showed up on the transporter pad of the USS Mayflower, the empty shell of his body was already there waiting for him.

That was the thing about beaming. As a rule, you rematerialised from the outside, in. Clothes, skin and hair first; everything else (skeleton, nerves, internal organs and the like) a few seconds later. Only the old Klingon transporters did it the other way around. Rematerialisation from the inside, out. Bashir had seen it done once and it had scared the living crap out of him. No, outside-in beaming was far less disturbing. Far more civilised.

 _If only though_ , he thinks as a familiar tingle runs through him, _if only they could get rid of_ _this_ _sensation. This momentary shiver of physical déjà vu._ The instinctive feeling that, for a second at least, the reconstructed you was nothing more than a recollection of someone else.

 _People!_ Bashir gapes. _The transporter room is full of people!_ He looks over their pips and their uniforms.

 _A Captain backed up by her First Officer. A security detail armed with slung phaser rifles._ _And behind them, a young engineer operating the transporter console._

The Captain hits her combadge. "We've got him Ensign. Raise the cloak."

As the bridge acknowledges, the air stays tense. The Mayflower's lights are set low. Its engine is hushed. This is a ship on silent running. This is a crew on edge.

"Humans!" Bashir blurts out joyfully. Everyone in the room jumps. "Oh thank God! Other actual humans!" He laughs manically. At long last, after three years; someone he can touch! Someone he can hug! He hurries forward with the enthusiasm of a castaway, on his way to embrace the nearest Red Shirt.

"Raise the forcefield," orders the First Officer.

A flick of a switch and a wall of yellow electricity shimmers across the front of the transporter pad, cutting Bashir off from the rest of the ship.

He stumbles back. "Wh-what?"

"I'm Captain Susan Nicholson of the USS Mayflower."

"Hello."

Nicholson pauses and looks him over. A gangly, bedraggled man in Cardassian clothing is clearly not what she was expecting. "Lieutenant O'Brien," she says.

"Yes Captain?" The woman at the console has a slight Irish lilt to her voice.

Bashir's heart leaps. "Molly!" he shouts happily. "How's your Dad?"

"This is him?" says Nicholson. "This is the Augment? This is Bashir?"

"Yes," says Molly numbly. "That's him."

 _It was Giel's own fault,_ all the voices in Garak's head whisper. _That's what we'll tell the Doctor. He'll understand._

 _The stupid boy had panicked and gone for his disruptor, hadn't he?_ _Only the idiot couldn't get the safety off_. _A_ nd by the time he did, _well…_

… _too late_. _The son of Tain had him already._

"Garak…wait, I…" Giel tries again to wriggle out from underneath him, stretching for the weapon out of reach in the grass.

 _He is a_ _threat_ _._ Garak pins his prey to the ground with force. _We never should have listened to the Doctor. We never should have spared his life._ _Well, that's not a mistake we're going to make twice, is it…_

"I can find him!"

With Giel's shout, Garak's knife stops a fraction of a millicam above the boy's throat. It hovers there for a long moment, the edge of the metal catching the moonlight. "Talk Montag Giel. _Very_ quickly."

"I…I…can find him." The boy's voice quivers as the words rush out of his mouth. "I put an epidermal tracer on him, months ago, under his skin. They ordered me to! I can use it to find him. Its long range." He pauses. "I think…"

The blade presses closer.

"It is long range!" Giel cries. "Definitely long range. Definitely still working, definitely detectable if he's in orbit. Absolutely 100% sure about that."

"You know the tracer's frequency?"

"Yes. Get me to a transporter and I can lock on to it. I can beam him back to you."

"Tell me the frequency."

"No."

"Tell me."

"Acgh!" Giel winces as the blade cuts a little into his skin. "I'm not a fool. Get me to a transporter," he repeats his terms, "and I'll input it. But I won't tell you first."

A thin trickle of blood runs down the boy's neck. Garak's instincts heighten. Deep within him, something reptilian and ancient anticipates the kill. His forked tongue flickers.

"I think it's only fair to let you know, Montag Giel, that I am considering my options. All the different _techniques_ I could try; all the different methods I have that will get you to talk." He inclines his head in mock self-surprise. " _My,_ there _are_ a lot of them…"

"Choices, choices." He leans close to the boy's ear. "Why don't I show you a few and then, perhaps, if you're very good, I'll let you pick."

"I won't tell you first," whispers Giel.

"Believe me. You will."

Doubled over on the transporter floor, Bashir gasps for breath. The glowing circle of the pad light fills his vision and throbs with a nauseous hum. Raised voices pulsate in his head: on the other side of the reactivated forcefield, a full blown argument is underway.

"You're out of line O'Brien." "You just hit him!" "He was resisting the search." "Like hell he was! Look at him: he can hardly breathe!" "He is a security risk." "Bollocks!"

"That's enough," admonishes Nicholson. "Both of you." She moves to separate her First Officer and Chief Engineer. "Miss O'Brien: he was resisting the search, return to your post. Commander Roper - "

Still on his knees, Bashir retches bile and blood onto the pad light.

The Captain lowers her voice an octave. "Commander Roper: if Iever see you hit a prisoner like that again I'll have you thrown out of Starfleet so fast your feet won't touch the ground. Is that clear?"

"With all due respect, Ma'am, he's an Augment. We have no idea what he's capable of. If you give his kind an inch then-"

"Is that clear?"

"Yes Captain."

"I'm a Federation Citizen." Breathing raggedly, Bashir pulls himself across to rest against the furthest wall. "I am a Federation Citizen," he repeats. "I have an inalienable right to life. I have an inalienable right to liberty."

He's quoting a very old line of defence; one he's not sure works anymore.

"I have a right to freedom of thought and freedom of movement..."

Bashir knows this declaration off by heart. So does Roper. So does Molly. So do the Red-Shirts. And so does Nicholson; she shifts uncomfortably.

"I cannot be imprisoned without law. I have the right to representation and-"

"There's a dead man in my Sick Bay Bashir," Nicholson interrupts. "A highly-trained operative executed, my doctor tells me, by an almost impossible long range shot. Was it you that killed him?"

"Yes."

She turns cold. "You severed his artery. Angled the phaser bolt so it rebounded inside of him and up into his jugular."

"I didn't mean to -" Bashir checks himself. He's lying. And he's met enough Starfleet Captains in his life to know; they respond best to the truth, however unpalatable. "I meant to," he admits. "I calculated the trajectory. I knew exactly what I was doing".

"It took him four hours to bleed out."

"I put him down in the surest way I knew how." He struggles back to his feet. "You didn't give me any choice. It was a café. It was lunchtime. The place was packed. You beamed in and you started shooting."

"My officers were not involved in that part of the mission. My orders were to-"

"It was a café!" Bashir shouts angrily. "There were children!"

"My orders," says Nicholson, raising her voice, _"_ were to bring an operative to Cardassia and beam him down: nothing more. I did just that."

"And I'm sure you can live with 'just that'."

"I can." Her expression is hard. "When the operative died I reported back to Starfleet Command who only then briefed me on his mission. Until that point, I did not know he was an assassin. I did not know he had been sent to kill you, or the Cardassian named Garak."

"But you do know now."

"I do."

"And?"

"And… now," says Nicholson, "I have new orders."

Bashir pauses. "They've told you to murder me."

"Or get one of my crew to do it. Yes."

"Will you?"

"I haven't made that decision yet."

Bashir's eyes flick across the four Red Shirts, stood-by with their phaser rifles held low. _For the moment._ _But drop the forcefield and shout a few commands and that's a firing squad…_

"I am a Federation Citizen," he starts up again, quicker and more frantic this time. "I have an inalienable right to life. I hav-"

Nicholson cuts over him. "Starfleet Command now consider your citizenship status to be open to interpretation."

"Meaning bloody what?"

She looks embarrassed. "That Federation Law recognises only the Julian Bashir born on Earth and who died aged seven on Adigeon Prime. Not the Julian Bashir who came into being afterwards outside of Federation territory and who, consequently, would not qualify for citizenship under -"

"Of all the fucking bullshit! _"_ The forcefield fritzes as Bashir hits it in frustration. "I was born on Earth. In England! In London! I served in a Starfleet Uniform for fifteen years. I am a Federation Citizen and this is all fucking bullshit!" He hits the forcefield again.

The wall of static settles and fades. "I don't disagree with you," says Nicholson.

"Then for pity's sake,help me. Please."

"Captain." Molly steps away from her post again. "Ma'am: whatever Starfleet think is happening…whatever is going on; they've got the wrong man. Julian isn't a threat. He's a doctor."

"He's an Augment," says Roper.

"He hasn't done anything wrong!"

Roper turns on her. "You know O'Brien, the planetary scanners came back online very quickly when Ensign Cranmer's shift began and you weren't the only Engineer on duty."

Molly ignores this. "Julian isn't a threat Ma'am. I told you before; I know him. He isn't."

Nicholson holds her hand up evenly. "He is in some way Miss O'Brien or Starfleet Command wouldn't have sent us here." She pauses, making a decision. "However; I am not going to put a man to death without knowing why."

She steps close to the forcefield.

"What is worth the risk of a covert operation into Cardassian territory, Doctor? What can you do…or what do you _know_ , that is so dangerous you have to die for it?"

Bashir stays silent.

Molly moves to Nicholson's aid. "Julian; talk to us. Talk to me. It's alright, you can trust the Captain. Tell me what's going on."

He looks her directly in the eyes.

"I have absolutely no idea," he lies.

They'd thrown him in a holding cell, put up a forcefield and turned the temperature to below freezing. For the last sixteen hours, Bashir's world had been reduced to three guards, three grey walls, veiled threats from Roper and a view of The Mayflower's brig.

They hadn't fed him and they wouldn't let him sleep.

Bashir knew what they were trying to do. He recognised the techniques. Sloan had subjected him to something similar during the war. Sat shivering on the floor, his mind will no longer make the official distinction between the Federation and the actions of Section 31.

He's no longer able to swallow the hypocrisy.

 _I survived what_ _the_ _Federation_ _did to me back then,_ he reminds himself. _I'll survive what_ _the_ _Federation_ _are doing to me again now. I'm not going to tell them a damn thing._

Nicholson hadn't been prepared to execute him without knowing why. Whilst he stayed silent, whilst he pleaded ignorance; he was safe.

If he cracked, if he told her what he knew; about the Vreenak Assassination and about the plot; well maybe she would help him or maybe she wouldn't. But the morality of a Starfleet Captain wasn't something he was willing to bet his life on. Not anymore.

 _And if…_ whispers the voice in his head _…if you tell them what you've started to suspect. What you've begun to piece together…about Sisko and about the order that felt wrong. About the gel and what you did...well…_

…it was far safer to say nothing. To stay silent.

 **WHAM!** Roper slams the base of his phaser rifle into the brig bulkhead. Bashir flinches. The First Officer smiles at his reaction. The doctor performs his best impression of Garak's withering sigh to show this all isn't getting to him.

It is though. He's hungry, he's tired and he's cold. Bitterly cold. He shakes uncontrollably.

If he was in Lakat right now, he would be warm. _Warm and at the water's edge._ _Or on the newly-formed river islands with their bridges over burning lava. Or down on the salt-flats, endless and unforgiving; or…_

… _or with Garak._

The voice in his head allows him the fantasy, just for a moment. Then, it jolts him back to reality. _Stay alert_ , it warns. _Stay in the here and now. Stay alive._ _Think._

 _No,_ Bashir argues back resentfully. _No, I can't do this anymore._ His hands are completely numb, his throat is raw and cracked.

The voice persists as it always does. _Face reality; you need to survive._

 _No. It's too cold. Too bright. I can't live with it anymore. Please. Let me take away the pain. Let me shut it out. Let me be somewhere else. Somewhere warm. Quiet._ _I need to escape. I need to be…_

… _home. Yes, I'll dream of home. Dream of Earth. Of England._

England. _Was it summer there now?_ He'd lost track of the months and Stardates never did help you much with the seasons. _It's_ _June,_ Bashir decides for no other reason than he wants it to be. _Yes, it would be June there now_. The sky would be blue and the days would be warm. _Well,_ he concedes remembering British summers, _warmish_.

He'd go to Kensington Gardens in the morning, The Red Lion for lunch, then take one of the old bullet trains to the country in the afternoon. Everywhere would be safe. Everyone would be welcoming. They always were in paradise.

Ursula Andress would be there too, obviously. _In a white swimsuit,_ Bashir decides, again for no other reason than he wants her to be. _We'll lie in the heather, in the sun and-_

He closes his eyes to dream.

"Augment!" Roper shouts. "Hey! Wake up! Augment! Hey!" His London accent brings Bashir back to reality in more ways than one. "What did I say Augment? No sleeping."

"I have been in here for sixteenhours." Bashir is close to snapping now. His voice, hoarse from the unrelenting cold is laced with hatred. " _ **Leave**_ , _**me**_ , _**alone**_."

With an audible swish, the brig door opens and Molly enters from the corridor.

 _And there she is,_ notes the voice in his head. _Right on cue. Right when you're about to crack, when you need someone to talk to. To confide in…._

"Hello stranger." Molly smiles with affection at the man from her childhood. "I tried to come earlier, but they wouldn't let me see you and -". She stops. Moving closer to the cell, her eyes widen. "What the hell is going on? You look awful!"

Bashir deadens himself and stares out blankly into space.

"And your lips are blue!" says Molly. "You're freezing!" She naively turns to Roper and the Red Shirts. "What's wrong with the environmental controls?"

 _Don't react._ The doctor's jaw tightens.

"Julian? What's going on? Why won't you look at me? I don't understand."

"Don't you?" he says. "Oh, it's an old trick Molly. Keep a prisoner cold and tired and hungry and frightened out of their mind. It makes them more malleable. More open to… persuasion."

"That is against every Starfleet Regulation!" She advances on Roper. "Get him out of there! Now! I'll… I'll go tell Nicholson, I'll-"

"She already knows," says Bashir without emotion. "Her ship is alone in Cardassian space; her crew are fatigued; Command won't reply other than to repeat the order to kill me and she needs answers. One way… or another."

He studies her coldly.

"I'm not going to tell you anything Molly. Run along back to your Captain."

"I'm not-" she stops. _Did her face just blush?_ Bashir isn't sure. "This isn't one of your holoprograms Julian," she says slowly. "Not everyone is working for someone else. Not everyone is a spy."

"But of all the assassination missions in all the galaxy, an O'Brien just happened to be on mine."

"It's a coincidence."

He sneers. "I believe in coincidences. Coincidences happen _every_ _day_." His words crack, bitter in the frozen air. "But I don't _trust_ coincidences."

"We were family once."

Bashir lets out a hollow, choked laugh.

"You're not him," says Molly softly. "You're not the Julian I remember." Sadness passes over her face. "Why won't you let me in?"

"Oh, very _good_ Lieutenant. Very _touching."_ He applauds her performance. "Want to see if you can manage a few concerned tears as well?"

A pause. Molly studies him.

"You've lived on Cardassia too long," she says at last.

Bashir blinks. "I…." He trails off.

Exhausted, he slumps down against the wall.

"Maybe I have," he admits. "Sorry. I … I just don't know anymore, Molly. I can't tell. Who to let in. Who to trust….I…"

His whole body deflates in resignation. His thoughts and his movements are slow. The hypothermia is taking hold and muddling his mind.

"I'm so cold. I'm so...tired..."

He closes his eyes.

This time, Roper doesn't shout out, doesn't try to wake him up.

This time, it's Molly's voice he can hear as he drifts close to unconsciousness.

" _Please_ Julian; I don't want them to hurt you anymore. You can trust me. You're my father's best friend. Whatever you're involved in; I promise, I'm here to help you. But I have to know what we're up against. You have to tell me what's going on."

Something metallic brushes against Bashir's neck. He quivers.

"Tell me. It'll be okay," soothes Molly hypnotically. "You haven't done anything wrong."

"I think…," he says as he fades towards nothingness, "…there was this order you see Molly, and I think…maybe I have…"


	8. What Religion Or Reason

Twenty years earlier.

Alone in his quarters, a much younger Julian Bashir tampers with the lock on his bedroom door. He's disabling the station overrides. He's trying to secure himself. A phaser lies, fully charged, on the nightstand.

A motion alarm is attached to the wall. He double-checks it. It's a recent addition acquired (at a truly extortionate price) from Quark. He could have gotten one free if he'd gone down to Supply. Or if he'd used the replicators. But then there would have been an official record of it. An official record for Section 31 to find.

And Section 31 is who the doctor is trying to keep out.

They'd come and taken him, from this room, in the night while he slept. Put a device in his skull to monitor his responses. Tried to make him sign a confession that he was a traitor. Deprived him of food; deprived him of sleep; made him believe all the people he loved had turned against him. And if…

… if the inquisition had gone another way; he would have disappeared, quietly, and no one would have ever known what happened to him.

Moving to his bed, Bashir lifts the pillow. He takes out the objects furtively concealed underneath. A plain paper notebook and a fountain pen; yet more expensive items purchased from Quark.

Turning to the first page, he begins to write:

 **Doctor's Personal Log.**

He underlines it. He flexes his hand: it aches already. Bashir is a 24th Century man through and through: he's use to dictating to a computer; not writing with a pen. _Am I even gripping it right?_ His letters look broken and childish.

A sense of complete helplessness descends upon him. This is going to take forever. And to make matters worse, he isn't even sure of the date.

"What day _is_ it?" he wonders out loud.

"Stardate 51701.3," the Computer answers, being helpful as usual. Always on stand-by, ready to be called. Always on an open channel.

Always listening in.

 _51701.3. What was that?_ Bashir struggles with the conversion. _That was…er…convert to base eight…erm… subtract the difference, two is less than three, so put the seven in the tens place and…_

He finds this hard even with his enhanced IQ. _How the hell does everyone else manage?_

The way Stardates worked was bizarre. It made absolutely no sense. Almost as if they were designed to confuse you; to make you lose track of exactly when in time you were. _Seven is less than eight, so you regroup, change a ten to ten fives, carry the one and…_

He has his answer. He writes it onto the paper. **April 4** **th** **2374\. Thursday.**

 _April 4_ _th_ _._ The realisation jolts Bashir. _It's only been a week,_ he thinks _._ Only a week since Section 31 had… done what they did to him.

He hasn't been able to relax; to properly sleep. Half the time he can't even convince himself it actually happened! And then there were the other moments – the worst moments - when he was absolutely sure he was still there. Still trapped in a fiction. Maybe if he just writes it all out, what happened and how he feels; it'll finally make sense. He'll be able to move on.

His pen hovers over the blank page. A thought tugs on Bashir's mind and stays his hand.

Section 31 had known everything about him. Every mission he'd ever been on; every report he'd ever filed. Every time he'd written to Starfleet Medical protesting an order. It had all been there on Sloan's PADD. All neatly gathered and used against him.

And they'd known other things too. Things not in the official logs. What kind of music he listened to. Which tea he drank. The holosuite programmes he played and for how long. In what precise place Kukalaka should sit on his bookshelf.

Who his friends were.

 _Can they see me now? Are Section 31 watching me, right now?_ What he would have dismissed as ridiculous before; as the height of paranoia, now seems possible.

He puts down the pen.

The universe was darker suddenly. It had grown up around him. _I'm an Augment._ The realisation hits home in a way it never has before. _I'm an Augment and I'm in the middle of a war. I don't have the luxury of being naive anymore._

Bashir's whole body tenses. _Agent Sloan is back again._ In the room and in his head.: all seeing, all knowing. Out to round up the unnaturals; out to lock him away. Moving through the darkness, the agent blurs slowly in with the shadows.

 _How can he_ _possibly_ _be here? How did he get in?_

Sloan reviews a PADD in his hand. "And what do the two of you talk about in these… 'lunches'?"

"Literature. Theatre. The spiced pudding."

"Politics?"

"Sometimes."

"Missions you're assigned to? Security reports?"

"He is my friend. There's nothing more going on. I -"

Bashir stops talking. No one is there. He's defending himself to an empty room. Sloan is gone. For the moment at least.

 _Just another hallucination_ , the doctor reassures himself in his best bedside manner. _Another flashback_. _Had a_ _traumatic experience Julian; totally normal and to be expected. Stiff upper lip and all that. They'll stop, soon enough, given time._

All the same, he would much rather they stopped now…

He moves to the dresser. Opening the top draw he takes out a hypospray and a purple vial of risperidone. _Thirty milligrams_ , he prescribes, _twice a day_. To take the edge off and prevent the hallucinations. _It won't take away the memories. Or the feelings. But-_

 _They tortured you_ , cuts in the voice in his head. _It was the Federation and they tortured you._

 _No_ , Bashir argues back, _it was Section 31. And it was… an interrogation. Not torture._ Torture is something that only happens on Romulus or Cardassia. What Section 31 did was unpleasant, yes. Unjustified? Possibly. _But they had to be sure. There is a war on._

 _It was the Federation!_

 _ **No**_. The doctor is adamant. _Section 31_ _interrogated_ _me. That's what happened._ He can just about live with that.

Because he wasn't angry about it. "I'm not angry about it," he says out loud. "Really _._ I'm not."

Not that it would matter in the least if he was. There was nothing he could do. Julian Bashir, the one permissible freak in the quadrant. Who'd lied at every possible opportunity about what he was…

…who on earth would believe him?

And there was only him. Up until a few months ago, he'd never met another Augment. Never even really heard of one. There were none in public life; none in political office. No augmented scientists. No other Starfleet Officers. He could find no genetically-engineered characters in any of the holo-programmes he played; no news about them; no articles. They simply didn't seem to exist.

He knew about the Eugenics Wars, of course. And Khan. Everyone knew about Khan.

But beyond that, there was just the others. The misfits; the unlucky ones. Hidden away in the institutions, driven mad by what had been done to them. They had been lost long ago.

He'd tried to help them; tried to prove that there was something, anything that they could contribute. That they could fit in. They couldn't: he realised that now. A week let loose on the station had more than proved that.

He had found an Augment like him in a novel once. Or at least he thought he had.

The author hadn't openly written it that way naturally, hadn't come right out and actually said it. It was all subtext and pauses and reading between the lines. But Bashir could recognise her. There she was. Falling in love; having a family; living a normal life.

If she could exist in a fiction, then maybe she was really out there somewhere? On some distant planet, orbiting one of those tiny points of light. He clings to the fantasy. _I could find her!_

 _I wouldn't be alone anymore._

"Your _friend_ , I see…"

Sloan is back. Bashir can see him reflected in the dresser mirror; looking through the bookshelves; tracing a languid finger across the volumes; checking up on what he's been reading.

"And are any other officers on the station friends with the Cardassian?"

"No." The doctor busies himself with filling the hypospray.

Sloan has reached Kukalaka now. He pulls on one of the bear's loose threads. "Anyone else, other than _you,_ had weekly meetings with a known spy for the last six years?"

"You're nothing but an echo Sloan. My memory playing tricks." He gasps as he injects the entire contents of the hypospray into his carotid artery in a single dose. "You'll be gone any second now."

An instant and Sloan is beside him. He slams his all-knowing PADD on the dresser and vents rabid hostility. " _That's_ how you passed information to your Vorta! Isn't it?"

"Any second now…" Keeping calm, Bashir places his hands flat on the dresser and waits for the drug to kick in.

"How the Jem'Hadar knew the position of the Seventh Fleet!" yells Sloan. "You told Garak, he told Central Command and they told the Dominion. Ninety Eight ships blown out of the sky. Thousands of souls lost. Brave men and women, loyal to the Federation and _you_ betrayed them!"

Bashir's composure snaps. "For the last time, I am not a Dominion spy! Garak is my friend and – Agch! Why the hell am I arguing with you?" He throws his hands in the air. "This doesn't matter! You're not real!"

Forcing himself to keep still, Bashir closes his eyes; sometimes you just have to. He closes his eyes and he counts:

"One. Two. Three…"

The man who isn't there, however, persists. He whispers venomously into his ear. "I've had enough of your lies, you augmented freak."

"Four. Five. Six…"

"You want to do things the hard way? Fine. But I'm going to get the truth out of you."

"Seven. Eight…"

"I'm going to get the truth out of you. And when I'm done, I'm going to take whatever's left of you and I'm going to lock it away."

"Nine". The room falls quiet. "Ten."

Bashir opens his eyes. The ethereal Sloan is gone. The risperidone has kicked in. He's alone again. Exhaling, he falls back on his bed, still dressed in full uniform.

He stares up at the ceiling. Up at the rough plaster coated over in starship grey. Bashir notices _every_ detail. Every uneven brushstroke. Every crack in the mortar. Every sliver of peeling Federation paint; the tiny chips of Cardassian red showing through from underneath.

He concentrates and tries not to. Tries to blur the world over. Tries to see what all the others would see. What any good, normal, irreproachable Federation Citizen would see…

…what O'Brien must see.

 _Yes,_ Bashir thinks, _O'Brien is what I should be aiming for._ He'd known it from the first time they'd met. O'Brien was a direction to go in: the decorated veteran of duty; the loyal citizen; the family man with the loving wife. O'Brien was who they all wanted him to be. Easy to get on with. Comfortable to be around. Secure.

And the doctor does try. He _really_ does. To be like Miles. To see the ceiling as he would see it: just even and everyday and part of the scenery.

But it's no use. Reality pours into him in sharp focus. He will never be like the others.

He will never measure up.

He will never belong in paradise.

He lies there, eyes wide open, for a very long time.

There was now a before. And there was an after. Section 31 had suspected him simply because of what he was. Done everything they did to him because of what he was. And what he was hadn't changed. It would never change. No matter how much he tried to blend in.

 _And Sloan is right._ _I_ _am_ _guilty._

 _I lied. I cheated. I covered up the crimes of my parents. Tricked my way into medical school; into the service. Forged bio-records. Did things no honest, decent Starfleet Officer ever would. They have no reason to trust me and every right to suspect me._

But most damning of all, deep down… very deep down… beneath everything he'd been taught growing up; beneath his belief in The Federation; beneath his dedication to its principles… there's the voice in his head.

And it's bitter and dissenting. And it questions.

And he just can't get it to shut up.

 _You were scared. You were angry_ , the voice says. _You were fifteen._ _Fifteen_ _. A boy determined to be a doctor, to be in Starfleet. To see the universe. They never even gave you a chance._

"No," Bashir argues back out loud. "There is right and there is wrong. What I did was wrong. I didn't like the law so I lied to get around it."

 _What were you supposed to do? Tell the truth and be condemned? Live the rest of your life as a second class citizen?_ _Or lie and be a doctor? Be what they all wanted you to be and live in paradise, damned._

"I'm still responsible. I made that choice."

 _That wasn't a choice_ , says the voice in his head. _That was a trap._

Bashir struggles for silence. Struggles for victory over himself. To reconcile an indifferent grey reality on to his idealism of black and white.

"The Federation is good," he tells himself. "It is. Its ideals are noble. The Federation is …Science… Philosophy. Culture. Safety. It is Civilisation. It is what we are fighting for. A society of enlightened minds, out grown of hatred or rage."

True, the Federation (along with most of the people in it) didn't trust Augments and didn't want them around. But then that wasn't so hard for him to understand. They were unnatural. Illegal. Incapable of playing by the rules.

And, when he'd finally been uncovered last year, they had… they had just accepted him! His heart leaps at the memory. He hardly dares to believe it, even now. _The Federation_ _was_ _Benevolent. The Federation_ _was_ _Tolerant. Kind._ _They were true to their word. They practiced what they preached. They let me stay._

He'd been so relieved. He owed them everything. He should feel grateful. _Why can't I feel_ _grateful_? His fingers trace the lines of his combadge for comfort.

"They let me belong."

 _As long…_ scorns the voice in his head, _as long as you pass Section 31's tests. As long as you_ _prove_ _you are valuable;_ _prove_ _you are loyal. Be the model officer. Fit in. Don't rock the boat too much; don't act too strangely or suspiciously or too smartly. Make an effort to be likable._

 _That, I don't mind so much_ , the Englishman thinks back ever-pleasantly. _Really. I can live – have always lived with that._

Only now, the stakes were higher. Much, much higher. They knew about him. They were watching him. He was exposed. Out in the open and in the middle of a war. His entire life hung by a thread.

A new chant starts to creep into Bashir's life. One hungry for security; for certainty; for belonging.

 _Wouldn't it be safer if..._

His combadge chimes. "Sisko to Bashir."

 _Wouldn't it be safer if…_

"Sisko to Bashir. Acknowledge please."

Coming back to the reality, Bashir hits his badge. "Yes Captain," he says. "Sorry sir, I was with a patient."

Sisko doesn't have time for pleasantries. "Doctor: how much bio-memetic gel do we have in the medical bay?"

Bashir sits straight upright on the bed: that's an unusual question. "A little under a hundred litres I think sir. I'd have to check the exact amount." He stops talking abruptly. Every fibre of his being wants to add the word: _Why_ _?_

But the chant has already taken hold. Drifting into his consciousness and settling in with his doubts. _Wouldn't it be safer if…?_

 _Wouldn't it be safer if… you didn't ask so many questions? Provide the information and shut the hell up. Like any normal Starfleet officer would. Sisko likes you better this way. When you don't talk too much. When you don't question orders. You irritate him less._

So, saying nothing, Bashir waits.

There is a long silence.

On the other end of the com, the Captain has reached the point of no return. His plot is about to be set in motion. This is his last chance to turn back. To listen to his doubts. His last chance to be talked out of it. To stop.

To remember the boy he was when he first started out. The idealistic young lieutenant ready to conquer the universe. Before the war. Before Jennifer. Back when good intentions and a smile were enough.

But the doctor and the com channel remain silent. And people are dying out there.

"Doctor, report to my office please." Sisko signs off abruptly.

"Yes sir." Unexpectedly on duty, Bashir stands and smooths down the creases in his uniform. He moves to the basin to wash his face; to make the effects of the risperidone and the dark circles under his eyes a little less obvious.

He lets the tap run a while and begins to bargain with Kukalaka and a little boy who wouldn't understand.

 _I'm still a doctor. I still give a damn_ , he promises. _Nothing will ever change that. Not fear or war or loneliness and definitely not anything Section 31 could do to me. I'll still triage patients based on medical priority - to hell with official procedure! To hell with whether they're on 'our side' or not!_

 _I'll still stop them if they're going to hurt someone like you._

 _And I'll speak up. I'll question situations or orders that feel wrong._

 _Only, maybe…_

… _not quite so often_ , he admits. _Or quite so_ _loudly_ _._ _And when I do… I have to… tone it down. Just a bit. Dial myself back. Not be quite so brash. Or quite so clever. Not ask bloody 'why' all the time! Not log so many formal protests with Starfleet Medical…_

 _It's not selling out._ He tries to convince himself now. _It's…facing reality._ _Yes, facing reality._ That was all it was. _Growing up._ _Seeing this universe for what it truly is, rather than what I'd wish it to be._

Feeling much better, he finishes washing his face and moves toward the door. It was all right. Everything was all right. And Sloan had concluded his loyalty to the Federation 'appeared' to be above reproach.

As long as he was careful, they wouldn't come for him again. He could get on with his life. He could still practice medicine. Still have a drink and play darts with O'Brien in Quarks. Still escape into a holosuite if it all got too much; if he started to get angry or the voice in his head got too loud.

And he could still meet Garak for lunch.

 _Only, maybe…_

… _. it would be safer if…_

… he didn't see him quite so often. Every other month or so, rather than every week. Only when he really needed to. When he was very lonely.

Sloan was right. The Federation were in the middle of a long, bloody war. Cardassia was on the other side. Yet here he was, an Augment of dubious loyalty, having weekly get-togethers with a former member of the Obsidian Order. The son of Enabran Tain no less!

It…it just didn't look good.

People might get the wrong idea.

It was dangerous, for Garak as well as for him. _If Section 31 can tortu-._ Bashir stops and thinks again. _If Section 31 can_ _interrogate_ _me, a loyal Federation citizen – what in God's name could they do to Garak, the isolated exile?_

He exits out into the corridor and toward the turbo lift. Toward Sisko's office. Toward an order to release eighty-five litres of bio-memetic gel. An order that he will follow.

 _Yes,_ he thinks, _it's safer this way. For both of us._ Garak would understand. He always did. Always figured out why; always got the message. That was one of the reasons Bashir liked him so much. You never had to actually tell Garak anything. Never had to give him concrete details.

You got to keep all your secrets, but Garak knew who you were all the same.

As for everything Bashir felt; well his feelings were his own, and could not be altered from the outside. The unfinished business could wait. "Just…," he whispers as he enters the turbo lift, "just for a little while."

Until the times were less uncertain. Until the war was over. Until it was safe.

"Things will get better. Things will change. They have to, eventually."

 _When?_ The voice inside his head rebels. _Tell me when it will be better Doctor? Tell me when it will be safe?_

 _A year?_

 _Five years?_

 _Ten?_

 _Twenty?_


	9. The Same Lie Twice

The study of a house in Lakat; warm, comfortable and pleasantly lit by the afternoon sun. The room's atmosphere is welcoming, its decor tasteful. Just a simple study. Nothing of note and nothing out of the ordinary.

Apart from the collection of ticking, twitching alien clocks hung from the walls. And the hooded insignia of the Obsidian Order mosaicked at intervals into the brickwork.

Garak works at a computer terminal: the only one on Cardassia he trusts is secure. He's scanning the skies. He's searching for the doctor. His doctor. But it's the same story as before, as for the last, frustrating seventeen hours.

 _I can't get a definite lock._ The faint mark of the epidermal tracer orbits in and out of the terminal screen. It appears and disappears with the turn of the planet, indistinct and fuzzy.

Near his feet, Giel is half slumped against the desk, wrists handcuffed to a chair. The boy's breath is shallow. _He's trying to stifle the pain._ Garak feels a swell of pride. _He's determined not to show me how much it hurts._ _Like a_ _true_ _Cardassian_.

A knife is embedded, still, deep in his shoulder.

The voices in Garak's head allow no regret. _Yes it was an ugly business. But rescuing the Doctor: that was the goal. The priority_. _We needed to extract the tracers frequency, so we did_. They repeat the family mantra: _'A disciplined mind doesn't allow itself to be distracted by sentiment or pity. A disciplined mind doesn't allow itself to be distracted by -'._

"Agch!" Giel cries out.

Garak's attention shifts from the computer terminal. "Ah, ah," he admonishes with a shake of his finger. "Don't attempt to slip the cuffs. Any movement and the blade will twist deeper."

The boy stills. "You could let me help," he says.

"I could. I _could_ also kill you."

"You haven't yet," he mutters. "I'm so bored! It's been like _ages_ ; it's been _hours._ What are you trying to do?"

"I am trying," says Garak with irritation, "to access the Central Command computer."

"What? Wait; that terminal links directly into the Command mainframe?"

"Yes."

Giel takes another look around his surroundings. "Just whose house is this?"

"Once I get access," continues Garak, ignoring the question, "I am going to reboot the Tachyon Detection Array; search the entire system for cloaked ships; boost the tracer signal; locate the Doctor and -"

"That's your plan?! The tachyon array!"

"Yes. And it's quite a delicate operation so I would appreciate it if-"

"The array hasn't been active since the war!" laughs Giel. "I doubt it even still works!"

 **Beep-beep.** The computer gives out an electronic trill. _I'm into the mainframe._ Garak allows himself a glimmer of hope. _I'm_ _one step closer to rescuing the Doctor._ He selects the global defence and detection icon.

A shimmering miniature of the Cardassian solar system projects up from the terminal. It hovers at his eye level, worlds and moons orbiting a bright red star. In between the spheres, waves of tachyons pulse out, criss-crossing to overlap and cover every sector of space.

Garak freezes. "Command has the tachyon array turned on already!"

"What?" Giel cranes his neck to see. "The array is on already!" he exclaims. "Why is it on already?" Garak begins to work; hacking deeper into the mainframe and spooling through the security log. "Why would they have it switched on?" continues Giel. "Garak! What are they using it for?"

He finds an answer in the log. "The same thing I am..."

"Central Command are trying to find the Federation ship?"

"Not _the_ Federation ship. _A_ Federation ship. _Any_ Federation ship under cloak. And they have been," he scrawls back through the log transcript, "for the last six months…"

"Six months?" echoes Giel. "The amount of energy it would take! Energy Cardassia can't spare." He lowers his voice to a whisper; they're not supposed to talk about this. "The Power Ministry can barely keep the lights on as it is. Such a drain!" He frowns. "And there's no reason to think the Federation would be anywhere near this sector. Most of their fleet is bogged down patrolling the Romulan neutral zone. It doesn't make sense."

 _No, it doesn't,_ agree the voices. _Cardassia was looking for a ship long before Starfleet even knew they were sending one. Before the Tal Shiar investigators started to hint they'd traced the source of the gel. Before the attack on Eurai itself…_

 _Someone else is playing the game. And they're playing it well._

A theory starts to form in Garak's mind _._ "Montag Giel," he says, "I'm promoting you."

"You…you are?"

"Yes. You are now Head of the Obsidian Order. Feared. Respected. Powerful." He tries to mould the boy's thinking to the role he needs him to play. "You are answerable to _no_ _one_. The spider at the very heart of the web. Your future is _limitless_."

"Is it?" says Giel flatly. He hastens his struggle to slip the hand restraints. "Thanks very much."

"Now: suppose you received certain… _information_. The Federation are planning an invasion of Cardassia. Nothing concrete, just that. Just speculation. From an alien government perhaps, one you didn't trust that much…the Klingons...or the Romulans say… would you believe them?"

"No."

"No of course you wouldn't! You'd be a _fool_ too! Because from where you're sitting the Federation hasn't bothered you in twenty years! You'd demand proof not wild stories. All the same…"

"…I'd look," admits Giel. "Just in case. Turn the array back on; keep scanning the solar system for Federation scouts; look for any incursion of our borders."

On the screen the tachyon pulses continue to blip, blip, blip out into supposedly empty space.

"And if you found not a scout, but a starship?" says Garak. "Heavily armed, under cloak and sat in orbit two hundred nautical miles above Cardassia: what _then_ would you believe?"

The pieces lock in his mind with cold horror.

"He's the bait!"

"Who is?" asks Giel.

Garak bolts to the terminal. "The Doctor; what he knows." His hands fly frantically across the keyboard. "The lure to get a Federation ship into Cardassian space!"

"What are you doing?"

"Sabotaging the array, shutting it off. Central Command mustn't detect the ship. Ach!" Garak cries out in frustration. A barrage of access denied codes fill the screen.

"But what about Doctor Bashir?" insists Giel. "Garak! Without the array, how will we rescue the Doctor?"

Two hundred nautical miles above Cardassia, Bashir can see spots. Big green ones. They dance in front of his eyes, kaleidoscoping out into a pulsing headache and the same dull view of the Mayflower's brig.

He groans. He diagnoses his symptoms. _Either they gave me a Whisky N' Warp Core Breach_ _TM_ ( _Delicious! Intoxicating! Banned In Three Quadrants!); or…_

"Erbium Pentothal," murmurs Bashir. _The Ferengi Truth Drug._ _Also banned in three quadrants_. A discarded hypo-spray lies on the cell floor. The events of the last hour begin to come back to him; blurred snatches of his interrogation.

 _I told them everything._

 _About the plot; about Vreenak. And what the Federation did during the war; and the order; and the gel. About how lonely I am on Cardassia. About when Section 31 questioned me and when I decided to stop seeing -_

Molly crouches beside him, holding a blanket.

He recoils.

"Julian, I -," she falters. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Nicholson was going to use a Memory Scanner if you held out any longer. I thought this would be better, I thought-." A shiver and a spasm run through Bashir. "Oh God." Molly swallows. "I am sorry. If I'd realised what it would do to you; that it would make you say, that much, I never would have suggested it."

He numbly lets her prop him forward and wrap the blanket around his shoulders.

"This Elim?" says Molly, leaning him back to rest against the wall. "Who was he? Another Augment in hiding on the station? He was; wasn't he? That's why you thought it was too dangerous to keep seeing him?"

Bashir is done talking. He draws into himself.

"What happened to him Julian? What happened to Elim?"

By the doorway, Nicholson and Roper are engaged in a hushed conversation. The Commander has finished giving his report. The Captain is fully briefed. She looks over at Bashir.

 _She's_ _deciding my future_. _Deciding whether I should live or die._ He feels six years old again. His fingers itch to hold Kukalaka.

"Get him on his feet."

"Yes Ma'am." Roper motions the two Red Shirts towards the cell. "Milosz, Rashid."

"Wait," says Molly with alarm. "What are you doing? No! Let go of him!"

Bashir struggles as he's hauled up from the ground.

"Captain!"

Roper grabs Molly's arm, roughly pulling her out of the cell and out of the way.

"No!"

Nicholson takes the phaser from her holster.

"You said you wouldn't hurt him!" Molly fights against Roper's hold. "If I co-operated, if I helped. Captain! You promised!"

"Everyone listen to me," commands Nicholson. "Listen to me."

A hush falls on the brig.

"This mission is classified." She paces through her crew. "What you have heard is classified. It is not to be discussed. Ever. Is that understood?" She leaves a moment of silence to let the order sink in. "Computer," she calls. "Erase all data from the brig's audio-visual recordings for the last-"

"Helm to Nicholson!" The panicked voice of the helmsman cuts in over the com.

She taps her combadge. "Go ahead Ensign."

"Four Cardassian Destroyers have entered sensor range, converging on our position Ma'am!"

All eyes look expectantly to the Captain. "Is there any sign they've detected us?"

 **WHAM!** A phaser blast hits the ship. Bashir is thrown to the ground. The Mayflower rocks and then veers violently. There's sirens; chaos; noise. The lights in the brig pulsate: on the bridge, someone has already hit red alert.

 _Is anyone injured?_ The thought enters the doctor's mind before he's even struggled back to his feet. Steadying himself, he looks over the crew with a professional eye: _Nicholson shouting orders; the Red Shirts following them; Molly and Roper frantically reviewing damage reports._

 _No, no one is injured. No one needs me…yet…_

… _nothing to do but be terrified then._ Bashir grabs hold of the nearest bulkhead. He's been in too many space battles. Four Destroyers versus one Starship? He knows how this plays out.

"Ready phasers: return fire." Nicholson marshals her crew. "Helm, load torpedoes: target th-

 **WHAM!** Another blast hits.

"Ach!" The cell lights fuse, sending a hail of sparks down on Bashir. Smoke vents into the brig, an acrid taste hitting his throat. _Tritanium vapour. The hull is burning already._

"External sensors are gone!" The helmsman's voice crackles over the com. "We've lost warp drive!"

 _What the hell am I doing here?_ thinks Bashir, suddenly struck by the sheer unreality of it all. He clings tighter to the bulkhead as the ship continues to swerve and rock. Adrenaline floods through him.

 _ **The sound**_ _ **.**_ The one he remembers far too well. A terrible, rasping whistle. Growing louder. Spluttering; screaming toward The Mayflower across the open void of space.

It's the sound of his nightmares.

There's only one course of action. Miles had taught him that, first day of the war. Only one thing any brave Starfleet officer can do, trapped below decks, with a quantum torpedo heading toward them….

Curl into a ball; wait; and pray it hits some other poor sod instead.

Unluckily for the bridge crew, it does.

There's an aching silence, then, the quantum burst expands. Time crunches, forward and back with a jarring shunt. Patches of matter begin to unravel; parts of the room, parts of the people – flattened into two dimensions before his eyes and twisted out of existence.

Reality Crash: strangeness melts through The Mayflower. Bashir can do nothing but watch as scrambled pieces of what used to be Roper are sucked, still twitching with life, into what used to be wall. When the explosion does finally arrive, it comes in a flash of psychotic pink.

 **BOOM!** The farthest bulkhead blows out. It collapses in, burying him in an avalanche of debris and darkness.

On the planet below, Garak watches the computer display screen with horror. It's no longer empty. With each passing second, more Cardassian ships enter into the picture. They hurtle towards the Federation intruder - a swarm of angry red triangles firing upon a single, drifting pale blue dot.

 **A Starship lurking above our homes!** The text chatter on the military newsfeed is all in agreement. **It is a provocation! It is a betrayal! It's a declaration of war! It's-**

"The Romulans," hisses Garak. He's certain now. "They must have found out about the plot; found out about the gel. Where and when it came from. _Who_ it came from. Gambled on Starfleet sending a ship to keep the Doctor quiet."

"Gel?" asks Giel. "What gel?"

"It wouldn't even be hard for the Tal Shiar to do! Stage the attack on Eurai. Drop a few hints here, leak a few reports there. Let San Francisco know you were _almost_ onto something; _almost_. Make them nervous their little secret was about to come out."

"Secret? What secret? Garak!"

"And then," he announces, "then…they just sit back…and wait. For the ship to get here. For Cardassian paranoia to do the rest."

On the display screen the Federation ship is now completely surrounded.

"They've engineered the entire scenario." Garak laughs at the irony of it all. "The Romulans are tricking _us_ into a war!"

On cue, a siren begins outside. Cranking up through twenty years of neglect and dust it echoes through the gardens and sleepy afternoon streets of Lakat.

"The air raid siren." Giel sits bolt upright. "Let me out Garak." He pulls at the handcuffs. "Let me out."

The console trills excitedly. Numerous alerts pop up on the display. "The starship's shields are gone," says Garak. "I'm getting a transporter lock!"

"We have to get to a shelter, we can't get trapped; I can't be buried again; I-I-… let me out!"

Garak is absorbed in his work. He's focused on the screen, on saving the doctor. _There it is_. The signal-mark of the epidermal tracer materialises. _There_ _he_ _is._ _My_ _Doctor._

 _Now, if we use the array to boost the lock; plug in a feedback loop; divert the excess tachyons to widen the transporter field and- ._ He stops. He's run out of hands. This is a two person job.

 _I can't do this on my own. I need help. I need…_

"Get me out!"

"Giel?" says Garak. The boy is hyperventilating.

"Air…there's no, no air," gasps Giel. "No light. They're dead. All of them! The bodies, I can -. " He twists violently, trying to yank himself free of the restraint. "Get me out! Get me out!"

The USS Mayflower drifts in space.

The explosion has left the brig devastated. Bashir and Molly clamber on top of the wreckage; they work fast, throwing debris out of the way, trying to reach the people trapped underneath.

"Crew of the Federation vessel." A Cardassian voice reverberates over the com. "Your ship is lost. Surrender and prepare to be boarded.

 _I can hardly see. I can hardly breathe._ Bashir pauses to cough up a lung-full of dust.

"Here!" shouts Molly. "Over here!"

He stumbles across to her in the smoke and darkness. They lift away a fallen beam to uncover two Red Shirts buried underneath. One is dead: the doctor doesn't need a tricorder to tell him that. The other moans in pain, blood pouring from a deep neck wound.

"Hold still." Bashir applies pressure. "You're going to be fine," he lies.

His mind triages the survivors. _Molly looks okay. Nicholson is…where is she?_ By the doorway, the Captain rises unsteadily to her feet, a large gash on her forehead. _Possible concussion, but_ _she'll live._ _The Red-Shirt is the critical case. The medical priority_.

He begins to work on his patient.

"Computer…" Nicholson calls, "access the brig's audio-visual recordings for the last twenty-two hours. Erase all data and - "

"Unable to comply," intones the computer. "Command systems non-operational."

"Situation report Miss O'Brien."

Molly has reached the wall panel. She reviews the information on the fritzing display. "We've got Cardassian troops beaming in on decks three, five, nine, eleven…"

Nicholson is already stripping down the dead Red Shirt's phaser rifle; re-calibrating it from stun to kill.

"…thirteen, seventeen, the transporter rooms, engineering-"

"Don't fight them," says Bashir. Lacking a med-kit, he turns his jacket into a make-shift bandage. "Surrender."

"Thank you for your suggestion Doctor. I'll take it under advisement."

"Kill Cardassian soldiers and you'll start a war!"

"I agree," says Molly. "It's inflammatory Ma'am."

Nicholson hits her combadge. "All hands, this is the Captain. This ship is carrying multiple personnel privy to classified information. It is vital to the security of the Federation neither they, nor our logs are captured. The Cardassians must be resisted with full force. Proceed to the end of your nearest corridor and establish a blockade. Nicholson out."

She moves to the door.

Molly stands her ground. "Captain: listen to me. I grew up in this region. It's a powder keg. It always has been. The Bajorans, the Cardassians, the tribes in the Badlands. This wasn't a wilderness before we arrived. One event can domino; you could destabilise everything!"

"With me, Miss O'Brien." Nicholson exits into the corridor.

"This is their space. This is their home!"

"That's an order Lieutenant."

"I know it's an order, Ma'am," says Molly. "But I choose not to follow it."

She angrily hits the wall panel, closing the brig door and activating the security lock.

"Oh God. What did I just do?" she says horrified. "Prophets help me..."

"You'll be court marshalled for that," says Bashir matter-of-factly.

"Yes, thank you, Julian! I am aware of that! Don't you ever shut up?" She crouches beside him and his injured patient. "Dad spent half his life fighting Cardassians. So did Aunt Nerys. I'm not going to come along and do it all over again. Now, show me what I do to help."

Bashir grabs her hand and guides her finger to the Red Shirt's neck to stem the blood flow. "Press there, hard."

"Lieutenant Giel." Garak's tone is one of dispassionate authority. "This is unacceptable."

"They're dead!" Giel tremors. He's somewhere else, somewhere long ago: a child on the last day of the war.

"Yes, they're dead. But you survived. You survived because you are strong." He struggles to hold the boy still. "Concentrate," he commands. "You cannot afford to show weakness. A disciplined mind; a truly Cardassianmind doesn't allow itself to be side tracked by fear or sentiment or-'."

"Get me out!"

 _\- pity._ The word catches in Garak's throat. He's heard cries like Giel's before. On Bajor during The Occupation. And later, on his own world. In his own city after the war. The calls of the children under the rubble, crying for help. Hundreds of them; thousands of them.

 _Some we never reached._

 _I'm stood in my father's house, speaking my father's words. Passing on a way of life that has led my people only to ruin._ From Enabran to Elim to Giel. _The suffering is… repetitive; never-ending._

 _Unnecessary._ _Tain's mantra is as ineffective on this frightened boy as it was on the one who cowered in this room seventy years ago, and begged not to be locked back in the dark._

 _Time to try a new mask... a new voice..._

"Listen to me Giel," says Garak, in the best impression of the doctor's bedside manner he can manage. "This isn't going to be like before. There's no bombardment. Nothing is going to fall out of the sky. This is different. Cardassia is different. _You_ are different."

He takes hold of the boy's hand.

 _I_ _am different,_ realises Garak. _I am not Tain._ This unnerves him. But, he perseveres; trying the doctor's words, the doctor's philosophy for a change.

"You're afraid: there's nothing wrong with that." He unlocks the cuffs. "But Doctor Bashir needs your help. I need your help. I can't do this on my own…"

 _The Red Shirt is dead._ Bashir feels the last pulse of his jugular beneath his fingertips; sees the blood flow ebb with the final beat of his heart. Life that was so immediate; so visceral only moments ago is now irrevocably, obviously gone.

And yet...

…he can't stop administering compressions. _I can save him._ He presses up and down on the Red Shirt's chest with force. _I can save him._ _I_ _can_ _._

Dim phaser fire echoes in the corridor. Outside, the surviving crew are following orders: they're fighting back.

Molly is knelt beside him. Reaching underneath her collar, she takes out a pendant. She clasps it and starts to intone the Bajoran prayer of the dead.

" _Don't_ _do_ _that_ ," snaps Bashir. "Not yet."

She ignores him. "Raka-ja ut shala morala," she prays, "ema bo roo kana..."

"I can save him. I can. I-"

 _You can't,_ says the voice in his head. _This man is dead._ With a cry of frustration, Bashir pulls himself away. He sits back on the floor; hopeless. Angry at the universe. Angry at losing a patient; as angry as he was the first time it happened.

"Uranak ralanon Milosz. Propeh va nara ehsuk shala-kan vunek." She exhales. "Aahven."

"He didn't believe in the prophets Molly. And neither do I."

"Sisko did. So did Aunt Nerys. You believed in both of them once."

"I also believed in Jadzia Dax. She died in a Bajoran temple praying for a child." The Red-Shirt's terror-filled eyes are still open; they stare out at nothingness. "This is where it ends. There's no more than this."

"You're arrogant and you're wrong," says Molly. "If Dax was here she'd tell you that."

She reaches and gently closes the Red Shirt's eyes with her hand.

"I used to do that," whispers Bashir. "I'd forgotten; I used to…" _When did I stop?_ He can't remember. _Was it during the war? Body after body after body. There isn't any point; they don't stay closed. Rigor mortis sets in. All the same… I_ _did_ _used to…_

A shiver of déjà vu runs through his body.

He twitches.

"Molly! Quick!" He grabs her hand and he pulls her, toward him, close as he can and into a hug.

"What? Julian, what's -"

The room starts to fade.

"Transporter beam," he says. "The cavalry's-"

"- arrived."

Bashir blinks. _Daylight._ _We're in a study._ His world is abruptly calm. _Quiet. Peacefu-_

"Doctor!" Garak is directly in his eye line, scandalised. "You appear to have a very young lady wrapped around you! And at your age too!"

Molly and Bashir untangle from each other.

"Here I wa- _we_ were," Garak corrects himself, gesturing to Giel, "genuinely concerned for your safety; moving heaven and high water to rescue you. And all this time, you were off, gallivanting about in orbit with -"

"Are you alright?" cuts in Bashir, switching the conversation to Cardassian. His question is directed solely at Giel.

"Um… well…" The boy is stood by the computer terminal, clutching his shoulder. He moves his hand to reveal the knife and the blood.

"Giel! For God's sake, sit down and let me look."

"It's nothing really…"

Bashir shoots an accusatory glance at Garak. "Nothing?" he says. "The blade's gone right through your proximal scales. No! Don't try and pull it out…"

"Garak," says Molly.

He regards her blankly. "Apologies my dear," he says in English, "but Doctor Bashir has entertained _so many_ lady friends over the years. Have we met?"

"I'm Molly! Little Molly with the pigtails. From the station?"

"Ah!" Garak's jealousy evaporates. "The Chief and Professor O'Brien's daughter."

"Yes, that's right." She smiles at him.

"Little Molly O'Brien with the pigtails." He smiles back ever-pleasantly. "All grown up and all the way out here on Cardassia." His eyes flick from her to Bashir and back again. "What a delightful... coincidence."


	10. The Eve Of The War

Night has fallen on the streets of Lakat. A parade of burning torches moves through the city.

Thousands of ordinary Cardassians are on the march. Soldiers, clerics, shopkeepers and doctors. Students, scientists, teachers and tailors. Respectable Cardassians. Well-mannered Cardassians. Cardassians you'd walk by in the street and say good morning to. All wearing armbands showing the hooded insignia of the Obsidian Order. All filled with bitterness and a hatred of alien blood.

Their boots thud over the cobblestones. Far above on the balcony of Enabran Tain's house, the doctor watches as the place he has called home for the past three years descends into hell.

 _War is coming_ , whispers the voice in Bashir's head. _Anarchy is coming_. _A new Cardassian dark age from which they won't be able to turn back._

Next to him, Giel leans eagerly over the edge for a better view.

On the gigantic view-screens that dominate the skyline, the swollen figure of Legate Tarn speaks to his people. Bashir and Giel listen as he lays out the new order of things. Behind the mask of a planetary struggle against the Federation aggressors, the regime are consolidating their power. Cardassia is being squeezed into an iron grip.

"Pacifism is heresy!" the Legate proclaims. "Doubt of total victory, treason!" The crowd in the street cheer. "Our glorious culture must be restored! Restored to a time before space travel; before galacticisation; before the outside universe corrupted it, infected it and made it impure!"

The screens cut to the image of a bonfire of books. Giel frowns and bites his lip.

"Sheltering aliens is punishable by death," the Legate continues. "If you suspect anyone of harbouring un-Cardassian sympathies it is vital to the security of our people and our homeworld that you denounce them, immediately!"

"Parmak, _listen_ _to_ _me!_ " From inside the house, Garak's raised voice diverts Bashir's attention. "For the last time, you aren't safe there," the Cardassian says. "They'll search the apartment."

Leaving Giel to his birds-eye view on history, Bashir opens the balcony doors and enters the study. Behind Tain's desk, Garak is speaking to Parmak on a monitor. It's a heated conversation that has been going on for some time.

"I'm a former Legate," hisses Garak. "I'm a _threat_. They'll come looking for me and anyone connected to me. You _have_ to get out of there."

"I've told you, I will. I'll go to the Cathed-"

"No!" Garak shouts over him in exasperation. " _Not_ to the Cathedral. _Not_ to organise a protest among the Hebitian followers. Parmak, it's _futile_. There was a Federation Starship above Cardassia! We are going to war. Tarn couldn't back down now even if he wanted to."

Bashir moves closer, passing by Molly who is working at the computer terminal. Absorbed in a frantic search for news of survivors from the Mayflower's crew, she hardly registers him.

"You need to get out of Lakat and into the country," Garak urgently instructs the other doctor. "Take your papers and then the first shuttle to the Ba'aten Peninsula and if you're stopped by the Obsidian Order tell them you hardly know me. That you're my physician and that's all."

"No," Parmak says calmly. "I'm going to protest at the Cathedral. I won't run from them. I won't lie to them."

"You won't lie to them?" The tailor blinks incredulously at the idea. "Then what will you do?"

"I'll tell them the truth."

Garak doesn't like the sound of that. "Which is?"

"That I'm your lover. You make me wish to Oralius that I wasn't sometimes, but I am."

"And?"

"And," Parmak takes a deep breath, "that I oppose this regime and the rounding up of the aliens; that we should not go to war again..."

The tailor puts his palm over his eyes.

"…that militarism has distorted our religion and perverted our science. That I believe in freedom of speech…"

"No," groans Garak.

"… and of thought," the other doctor continues quietly. "That these are natural rights, given in the Hebitian scripture where everything is said and everything is written. And that the Obsidian Order is, and always was, an abomination run by mad men and that I will do whatever I can, short of violence, to stop it."

"Have you gone _insane_?" Garak gapes at him. "You stand on the cathedral steps saying all that and they'll kill you!"

"Yes," says Parmak, "They probably will."

Bashir sees a flicker of deep, desperate care bubble up through the tailor's mask. It lingers treacherously on Garak's face for a moment, before being quickly buried back below.

"Parmak, be reasonable. _Think._ Throwing your life away isn't going to help anybody or change anything. There are _quieter_ ways to take a stand, _cleverer_ ways. Ways that don't involve martyrdom. Wait," Garak urges. _"_ Let me contact Alon's daughter, or Kotan -"

"People are suffering out there, right now," says Parmak calmly. "I'll not be silent."

"You'll _be_ dead!"

The crowd in the street is growing louder now; shouts for revenge and glory mingle in to the sound of distant phaser-fire. Elsewhere in Lakat, the Obsidian Order death squads are already at work. The round-ups have begun.

Garak gestures wildly at the noise. "Listen to that! Listen to them!"

"I have to speak out."

" _Parmak,_ " hisses Garak. "This _isn't_ the time."

"Yes," he says. "It is." Reaching toward the screen, Parmak's hand hovers over the channel controls. Unearthly green eyes search over Garak and the other, infinitely oblivious doctor at his side. "This is the time when it still matters."

"Kelas -"

Parmak smiles. "If not now; then when?"

The monitor disintegrates into static.

"Kelas!" Garak shouts. But there's no answer; the other doctor is gone. "No!" The Cardassian hits the console in frustration.

Bashir watches him a moment. Then, he makes a choice. _I am going out there to help_. The medkit he used to treat Giel is still open on the sofa. He edges toward it. _If there are protests, there will be injured. Parmak will need help._ The choice is impulsive; almost entirely altruistic. Almost.

Because the final part of the puzzle is gnawing away at Bashir. _Sisko. The order. The gel. The plot._ And he can't find a way out. _Vreenak. Us. Them. The Romulans. Biogenic Weapons._ Whatever way his mind put the pieces together, he keeps coming to the same answer…

 _Eurai_ _._

 _The attack on Eurai used weapons that had a bio-memetic gel payload of unknown origin..._ He reaches toward the strap of the medkit; and the easiest form of escape.

"Don't even think about it." Garak's eyes register Bashir with a chameleonic swivel.

The doctor's fingers twitch over the medkit.

"You're human. You're alien. They'll lynch you before you pass the first corner."

"What?" Molly's attention is diverted from her computer search for the Mayflower's crew. "Julian, what are you doing?" She moves to him with familial concern. "You can't leave!"

"He won't."

Bashir shoots a poisonous look at Garak.

The Cardassian holds him in a long, considered gaze: probing and sifting through the doctor's tangled psyche, dissecting his outlandish responses and his sapien emotions. "You aren't Parmak," he muses coldly. "You want to be, you try to be. But you're not. Not deep down." He tilts his head, trying to figure the doctor out. "Deep down, you're more like…"

Something clicks in Garak's mind. He realises what Bashir needs; what he's looking for.

"There's no forgiveness to be found out there."

"I…" Bashir swallows. _Caught out._ Letting the medkit drop to the ground, he sits on the sofa with his head in his hands. _Nowhere to escape to, nowhere to run. No one to ask for guidance; to fight his corner, no matter what. Not anymore._

"How many?" he whispers.

"What?"

"I read the reports about the attack but I… I don't remember. It didn't seem important." The doctor looks up at Garak with lost green eyes. _"_ How many people died on Eurai?"

"One hundred and three."

Bashir despairs. "A hundred and three…"

"The Tal Shiar murdered those people," Garak advances toward him. "No one else. They manufactured an incident to investigate; gave the Federation something to panic about."

"But," Molly interjects, "Eurai was a Romulan settlement."

"Yes," answers Garak, "and a particularly troublesome one at that. Packed to the rafters with pro-Vulcan dissidents and undesirable Remans."

"They used bio-genic weapons against their own people?" The Lieutenant is appalled.

"Why not? It's what I would have done," Garak glances at the doctor, " _once_." He tutors Molly with a grandfatherly air. "Neutralise an internal threat, whilst dealing with an external one. Two birds with one stone. And it follows the golden rule of galactic government…"

"… you can repress, incarcerate or kill as many of your own citizens as you like," Bashir says numbly. "Just pick your targets _carefully_ and be sure to keep it within your own borders. No one will mind. No one will intervene. In fact they'll hardly notice."

Garak studies his old student with curiosity. "I didn't teach you _that_ …"

"No, that I learnt in the Federation. A long time ago."

The doctor takes a deep breath. Pulling himself back up on his feet, he faces Garak and the past directly in the eyes.

"It was Sisko. He was the officer who led the mission."

"Yes."

"And it was me. I released the gel."

"You didn't know."

"I knew it was wrong. I knew that much." Bashir berates himself. "Eighty-five litres of gel; that amount, that fast, in the middle of a war? It _had_ to be for biogenic weapons. It just _had_ to be. And I …," the doctor still can't believe he actually did it, "…I let it go."

"You followed your orders. There's nothing wrong with that."

"Everything is wrong with that!" Bashir explodes with anger at Garak. "How, after all these years do you still not understand? I should have spoken out. I should have made a stand; said no. But because I was frightened and because it wasn't safe -"

"Oh, Doctor, _please_ ," Garak groans. "Spare us the Federation piety. _Of course_ you followed your orders! You were a soldier fighting in a war!"

"I was a doctor."

"You were a soldier," says Garak with exasperation. "From the day we first met. You wore a uniform; you carried a phaser and you followed orders. You held an officer's rank - no matter how many times you asked Chief O'Brien to 'just call you ' _Julian_ '".

"I could have done something. If I'd disobeyed then…"

"…you would have been court marshalled and then silenced and you know it."

An expensive-looking bottle of kanar sits on the dresser. Reaching for it, Bashir starts hunting for a glass. There are memories he wants to block out as well as Garak's words.

"You were _a soldier_." The son of Tain has surfaced now. He coils intimately around the doctor. "Starfleet taught you to kill as well as to cure. I _saw_ you: the Klingon; the Changeling; _many_ Jem'Hadar. You were good at it. A very good soldier. A very _intuitive_ killer."

"Get the hell away from me."

Bashir moves to the far side of the room, putting as much distance between himself and the Cardassian as he can.

Garak hisses. "Why won't you see the truth? You were no more 'just a doctor' in that war than I was 'just a tailor'."

"I could have stopped the gel. I could have stopped those people dying! I had a choice!"

"No you didn't," Garak maintains. "Bodies stink, soldiers kill and orders are followed. _That_ is the reality of war. _Every_ war, _every_ army and _every_ empire, from Caesar to the present day. The basic facts don't alter with morality! They don't change depending on whether or not you are 'good' or because your side's cause just happens, this time, to be right."

He advances toward the doctor. "There is _always_ collateral damage. In times of war, _innocent people_ die. _Civilians_ die. _Children_ die and both sides kill them."

"I know that," breathes Bashir with emotion. "I was here too Garak. I saw…," he struggles against the enormity of the memory. "I saw all of that." He looks at the tailor. "I heard them."

Bashir's mind relives that last day. _Thousands of bodies rotting in the heat._ _The shadowed outlines of atomised people blasted on to the walls. The cries from under the rubble._ _The utter, total, cataclysmic devastation._

"I was part of it."

A reptilian hand gently presses on the human's shoulder. "We both were."

The doctor doesn't pull away.

"There can't be another war," says Bashir after a moment. "We can't let it happen again."

Garak hesitates. "Our best hope," he begins, "lies with the Federation public. We need to get you," he pauses, "and Lieutenant O'Brien here naturally, away from Cardassia-"

"It won't work Garak."

"- and beyond the range of the Obsidian Order censorship signals. If you can contact," the tailor's tongue struggles with a distastefully un-Cardassian concept, " _a journalist_ , they can expose the conspiracy; expose the real reasons for war. Get the people on Earth to vote against their leaders; or at least for more moderate action-"

Giel bursts in from the balcony. "Everyone's going mad out there!" he says, a breathless tornado of limbs and adrenaline. "Something's about to happen."

On cue, the Viddy Screen on the wall flickers automatically to life. After a short blast of patriotic music, an image appears. Knelt on the ground, blindfolded with their hands tied are five humans: the surviving crew of the Mayflower. The hooded insignia of the Obsidian Order is painted on the wall behind them.

"They're alive!" exclaims Molly. "There's Nicholson! And that's Lopez, one of the nurses!"

The set-up is a familiar one on Cardassia. Bashir, Garak and Giel recognise immediately what's about to happen.

"Turn it off," says Bashir urgently in Cardassian.

Giel is nearest the screen controls. "I can't," he says, "it's an executive broadcast."

The doctor grabs hold of Molly's hand, pulling her around to face away from the screen. "Look at me, look at me."

"What's going on?"

"Don't turn around," Bashir instructs. Over her shoulder, he can see two Cardassian soldiers entering the screen. "Just keep looking at m - "

A muffled crack rings out. The sound of a phaser bolt fired directly into the back of a human skull. It's followed by a heavy thud as the first body hits the ground. Giel looks away in disgust. Outside the crowd roars its approval and howls for more alien blood.

Molly's eyes, firmly locked on Bashir's, fill with tears. The noises repeat, inevitably, four more times. She jumps at the sound of each shot.

"They killed them," she says.

"Yes."

"All of them?"

"I'm not sure," Bashir lies. He pauses. "Yes, all of them," he adds softly.

The Viddy Screen bursts into patriotic music again; loud and victorious. Over the banner of the Cardassian flag, the bloated figure of Legate Tarn materialises. He waves magnanimously at his people.

"You _fool,_ " Garak spits at him. "You weak _fool_. You've just signed Cardassia's death warrant. A public execution! Starfleet will _annihilate_ us."

The doctor focuses his attention on Molly. She's shaking with shock and anger. "Are you alright?"

"These people are barbaric. How can you live here Julian? _How_ _?"_

"You live here too Molly," Bashir says gently. "The galaxy doesn't simply stop at the Federation border."

" _This_ ," she gestures outside with revulsion, "is not my world."

Something icy and dismissive comes over Garak's features. "That's right," he says, "it isn't. It is not your world and you could never understand it."

"What I don't _understand_ ," snaps Molly "is how you Cardassians have let things get so bad." She advances angrily on Garak. "We gave you democracy. We gave you post-scarcity economics. We gave you aid. You should have joined the rest of the _civilised_ galaxy by now!"

"That's enough Molly," Bashir warns. "Come and…," he trails off, rubbing his temples, overcome by a wave of sudden heat and nausea.

"When the Federation withdrew, this was a stable planet on the road to recovery-"

Garak lets out a contemptuous laugh. "And where, exactly, did you learn that? _Starfleet Academy_? He sneers. "I was Legate when the Federation casually beamed out of here Lieutenant; I was in charge. And do you know what they left me with? Free elections, half a billion orphans _,_ a handshake and the 'very best of Human luck'."

The room about the doctor is swirling now. Unsteadily, he makes his way to the sofa.

"Oh," Garak wrinkles his nose in disgust, "and sixteen cases of _root beer_. A truly vile beverage that languished in my drinks cabinet and lasted _far_ longer than the democratically elected government did."

"I don't feel..." Bashir tries faintly to interrupt. "Garak, I… "

"That out there is not some sickness unique to the Cardassian soul!" Garak says with passion. "That is what war, _total_ war does to a place; what it does to a people. Half of our cities destroyed; a third of our population wiped out in a single day. _A single day._ That is twenty years of grinding poverty, humiliation and despair!"

"We _tried_ to help you!"

Garak dismisses her, "Your people are _clueless,_ Lieutenant O'Brien. They're _tourists_."

"Doctor?" Giel is stood close to Bashir now, studying him with concern. "Are you alright?"

Blood thumps in the doctor's ears. In front of him Giel's face starts to blur. Everything in his vision is becoming dull; indistinct; muted. Everything…apart from the Bajoran pendant fastened tightly around Molly's neck.

It shines. Brighter than anything Julian has ever seen.

" _What?"_ he whispers.

The world recedes suddenly like a broken wave from the shore. The fabric of reality rushes sickeningly away from the doctor, abandoning him to the total whiteness of zero-space with nothing more than a soft, apologetic gurgle.

* * *

White space.

All he can see is light.

All he can hear is his breathing and the beat of his heart.

The doctor struggles to gain his bearings. But there is no direction here; no distance. Just light. Everywhere. Enveloping, enclosing, omnipresent light. As eerie and terrifying as total darkness. Here, there's nowhere to hide. Here, every part of you can be seen.

"Hullo!" Bashir shouts, expecting nothing back other than his own echo.

He doesn't even get that.

His mind searches for something to anchor his sanity to. Something he can investigate; that he can prove. _Ground._ He jumps slightly to test it. _There is ground beneath my feet._ Kneeling, he puts his ear and palms to the ground. He knocks and listens. _No vibrations. It isn't hollow_.

A baseball rolls across his newly discovered un-hollow ground and into his eye-line.

The doctor picks the ball up and drops it. It falls a few inches and bounces. "Gravity," he announces, pleased with his experiment; "which means in all likelihood at least _some_ of the other physical laws are present. And there _are_ directions because this is down, and this is-"

Bashir's mind finally catches up with what's going on around him. He bolts upright.

There, stood in front of him with a baseball in his hand, is Captain Benjamin Sisko.

* * *

Tiptoeing across the study, Giel sneaks to the doorway. _I could be a gentleman thief,_ he imagines, dreaming himself into the exciting world of his Earth books. _Just like Raffles in The Ides of March!_ _Or Simon Templar!_ His footsteps land softly on the Leyik-skin rug and attract no attention from anyone else in the room.

The Doctor is laid out on the sofa, still unconscious. Nearby, Garak and Molly anxiously converse about his condition.

 _In Standard._ _Again_ , Giel notes with bitterness. _Excluding me._ _Ignoring me._

 _Still, at least they've stopped shouting at each other now…_

He lifts the old iron latch on the door. It creaks, loudly. His heart racing, Giel whips around sure that someone, sure that Garak will have heard. His mind works overtime, formulating a convincing story about where he's going, what he's up to…

 _No need._ The tailor is oblivious to everything but his patient; attentively running a medi-scanner over his temples. Beside him, the human woman continues to chatter.

Forgotten and unnoticed, Montag Giel slips quietly out into the Cardassian night.

* * *

Molly doesn't hear the door shut. She's watching Garak play at being the doctor and can't shake the feeling he's enjoying the performance.

'Ah," "Hmm." "I see". The Cardassian reacts to each warble and electronic trill of the medi-scanner with an assortment of mutters and facial expressions shamelessly stolen from Bashir.

"Well?" Molly demands. "What's wrong with him?"

"In my professional opinion… he's unconscious."

" _Garak_ "

"My medical knowledge is _not_ extensive, Lieutenant. From what this _thing_ ," Garak shakes the scanner in technological frustration, "is telling me, I don't think his life is in any danger."

"But you aren't sure?"

"He's fatigued and hasn't eaten in two days. I am also detecting," Garak reads words he doesn't really understand from the display, "some 'unusual synaptic potentials'." He pauses. "Not to mention, a _carelessly_ high level of Erbium Pentothal recently injected into his system."

Molly is unable to meet the Cardassian's gaze. Her mind searches vainly for a safe topic of conversation. One that is going to fill this long, uncomfortable silence; one that isn't going to re-start their earlier argument.

"Julian mentioned an old friend of his before."

"Hmm, did he?" mumbles the tailor non-committedly.

"Someone from back on the station. I wondered if you knew what happened to him. I think he might have been another Augment, one still in hiding - I'm not really sure. What he was saying… it was pretty garbled."

"Information obtained under torture tends to be." Garak serenely continues to scan. "Did he give you this friend's name?

"He said it was Elim."

"Elim?" Garak snaps off the medi-scanner.

"Yes. I think… I think maybe Julian abandoned him. He said Section 31 interrogated him and were watching him. That they'd put this, this monitoring device in his head and he was worried, if he kept seeing Elim, they'd do it again and -".

Molly stops.

The Cardassian is completely still, staring at his sleeping patient. His sleeping Doctor.

"Garak?" she asks.

"You want to know," he says, "what happened to Elim…"

* * *

 _Hi This is a work in progress. New chapters to follow ( probably about two or three from the end now I think). I'm not a fast writer, so updates are every four to five weeks. If there's anything you'd like to see happen in the story, please do review and let me know and I'll try and work it in. Bluemeany.x._


	11. White Space

_Sisko_ _._ Bashir rises to his feet. _The always generous, always noble, ageless Captain Sisko_. The man of action. Of adventure. Of authority. _The man that everything else revolved around._ The man he'd wanted to be when he was young.

The man you trusted. The man you ran to; who was always willing to at least listen to your story no matter how incredible a tale you told him.

The man who'd give you a runabout at 4 o'clock in the morning; who'd recommend a Ferengi to the Academy and have a Changeling for his Chief of Security. Who'd seek out Starfleet's only Klingon as a Commander and keep an Augment who lied for his doctor.

The man who'd constantly defend your right to be there and do it so quietly half the time you wouldn't even notice. The man who Bashir wants to be real; needs to be real. Gone for twenty years. And now, conveniently, coincidentally, stood in front of him…

"Look at you," beams the ghost from his past. "Doctor Julian Bashir: alive in the universe."

Bashir doesn't trust this, at all. "Where am I?"

"The Celestial Temple." Sisko looks over the unkempt, unshaven man who's just washed up with pride. "Zero space. The existence outside of time."

He takes a wary step toward the Captain. His boots, caked in a clayey layer of Cardassian mud leave footprints on the immaculate, white ground. Under the guise of performing a medical exam, he reaches for the apparition's wrist.

"Are you alright?"

Sisko shrugs. "Do I look alright?"

A pulse: Bashir can feel the steady, human beat. "Yes."

"Then I am."

But the doctor isn't satisfied. _He doesn't quite_ _feel_ _like the Captain._ He struggles to put his finger on it. _Something is off. Something has changed._

 _Or rather…_

… _nothing has._ Sisko is the same as the last time he saw him. Still in uniform; still fifty years old. Held outside of the passing of the years, while the doctor has grown up and grown old.

 _That's_ _what feels different._ _That's_ _what's changed._

 _We're the same age now._

The lines on Sisko's face are mirrored on his own. Bashir looks his Captain over with older eyes. Noticing more, understanding more. Seeing the tiredness in his expression; the grief. Recognising the determination and the confidence.

"You aren't a ghost," he half whispers.

"No," says the Captain patiently, "I'm not."

 _This_ _is_ _Sisko_. Undeniably the man who was his hero. Undeniably human. Reassured, Bashir drops his guard.

"I've started an interplanetary war sir," he blurts out, "and I don't know what to do."

Sisko raises an eyebrow.

"I need help, I need guidance," he continues, slightly hysterically. "The Romulans found out about the Vreenak Assassination; found out about the gel, the fake data-rod; everything. So Starfleet sent a ship to silence me - oh and Garak too but he staged his own death; only the Cardassians detected them and thought it was an invasion and - "

Sisko grabs him and pulls him into a hug. The kind of hug he used to give Jake, no matter how tall he grew. Bashir shuts up out of sheer surprise.

The seconds pass.

Outside of time, outside of space and inside a hug: Julian finds something he should have had but never did. Something he'd spent a desperate childhood trying to get. Given now so _easily_ he finds it hard to understand.

He clings tighter.

Suddenly, the ground beneath Bashir's feet quivers, freezes and splays out in several unexpected directions, knocking him down. A bulge in the fabric of space-time swirls nauseatingly around him; and only around him, in a way he can't help but take rather personally…

Sisko holds his temples as if fighting off a headache. "He's my officer. He's under my protection."

The ground of white space settles and stills again. Sisko helps Bashir back up.

"What the hell was _that_?"

"Some of the more vindictive Prophets."

"Now see here!" He addresses his irritation upwards in as polite an English manner as he can manage. "I'm sorry about the mud on your floor but I hardly think it merits -"

"You're a temporal being," says Sisko. "They don't want you here."

"Why not?"

"You progress, you change. They don't." He grins the grin of a man delighting in breaking the rules and shaking up eternity. "It unnerves them."

"You brought me here?" clarifies Bashir slowly.

"Yes."

 _"_ You pulled me out of four dimensional space-time?"

"Yes."

"To _annoy_ the Bajoran gods?"

"I can't think of anyone better qualified."

"Sir!" exclaims Bashir. He pauses. "You're joking?"

"Partly," says Sisko.

As if it was the most natural thing in the galaxy, he raises his arm and places the baseball into mid-air. It hangs there, stationary.

"The Prophets live…I live…in the Past, the Present and the Future. For them that mud has always been there; will always be there… even after they've wiped it away. It is part of this existence now. Niggling away at their consciousness like an itch they can't scratch."

Sisko tugs down the shirt of his uniform. All business, he cuts to the chase.

"I was in command Julian. I gave the order. I'm responsible."

"I can't accept that sir."

"No. I know you can't."

"There must be something we can do." Bashir glances at the suspended baseball. "Something you can do. If…if you pulled me out of time, you can put me back. Back during the war, back on the station."

Sisko is already shaking his head. "It won't work," he says gently.

The doctor however continues to grasp at the only straw he can find. "Maybe I can stop myself following the order; I can change what happened..."

"A day once lived can't be altered."

"But youcould send me back? You could do it?"

He doesn't answer. Lost in thought, he reaches toward the ball suspended in space. With a light tap, he sets it spinning. "It isn't linear," he murmurs.

"What isn't?" says Bashir. "Time?" he guesses.

Transfixed, Sisko watches the sphere rotate.

"Captain?"

Coming back to the here and now, he plucks the ball out of the air. "I can make you a shadow in the Past. YourPast. A whisperer in the dark. But there are no lines between the years. No markers to separate one day from the next. I'd have to splinter you across your whole existence, alongside every moment. "

Bashir jumps in with eagerness. "I understand sir."

"No," he says sadly, "You don't." Sisko looks over the determined man in front of him. "Alright," he sighs, "the Past." He stretches his pitching arm.

"The Past," echoes Bashir. "Okay; time travel." He psyches himself up for the unknown. "No big deal. I can do this."

The Captain is throwing the ball into the air now.

 _He's warming up_. _That's odd_. A terrible suspicion pops into his mind. _Oh no._ "This process of going back to the past…this…" He swallows and tries to find the courage to voice his fear. "This isn't going to involve us actually playing baseball…is it, sir?

Sisko's expression widens into a delighted smile.

"Right, yes," says Bashir with resignation. "It is."

 _That's_ _why you backed off!_ In his father's study, Garak finally has an answer to a twenty year puzzle; one he's turned over again and again in his mind, never quite able to solve. _That's why our relationship ended!_

He leans over the unconscious Bashir, willing him to wake up.

 _I was a weakness you couldn't afford…_

"Garak?" says Molly. "You were telling me about Elim? About the other Augment and what happened to him."

"Elim wasn't an Augment."

"He wasn't?"

"No. He was… a Cardassian. I killed him."

"You did? Why?"

Garak takes hold of his patient's hand. "To save myself. Why else?"

"But I thought…" Molly pauses. She tilts her head. "Elim was Julian's lover; wasn't he?"

"Perhaps. I was never sure."

"He was. The way he was talking about Elim; about how he felt. He was."

The first rays of the Cardassian dawn creep through the balcony windows. They dance brightly over Garak's face, chasing away his masks along with the shadows of the night. Warm tears swirl up in his eyes. He quickly blinks them away.

Molly's mouth falls open. "Julian is a man who divides the world in two: the good and the bad. How ever did he begin… to comprehend you?"

"He didn't try. He just trusted me."

"Why?"

Garak pauses. _I don't know. I can't think of a single reason._ "Maybe," he says, "because I've never injected him with Erbium Pentothal."

Molly looks at the ground. She shakes the medkit. "There's no hypospray in here," she says, still not meeting his gaze. "I'll go see if I can find one in the bedrooms."

Garak's attention returns to the doctor. He waits until the door shuts.

 _We're alone. It's safe._ He clasps Bashir's hand tighter.

"I forgive you," he says.

In the blankness of White Space, Sisko warms up at a make-shift pitcher's mound. A Cubs cap on his head and a mitt on his hand, he's in his element.

Bashir however, is not. Stepping up to the outlined batters plate, he scrambles through everything he learnt at the Academy about temporal mechanics. _Einstein; Hawking; Mallett: I read them all._

 _And not one of them_ ever _said_ _anything_ _about playing baseball._

"This is how we time travel?" he asks as the Captain hands him a bat. "You throw, I hit?"

"Just one pitch after another," says Sisko, "and the game begins to take shape."

"But I don't see how -"

Bashir breaks off. Because around them, things are beginning to take shape. Forms and hues coalesce out of the ether. They run across White Space, spreading like watercolours over a blank page and filling out the scene to the horizon.

 _A baseball field!_ He spins about. The grass is green. The sky is blue. The Federation flag flutters in the breeze. It's a peaceful image. A simple image. Of a world he hasn't been back to in half a lifetime and can sometimes scarcely remember anymore.

"Earth," says Bashir. _Or close enough to pretend._ He gazes up at the eternally cloudless sky and basks in the sunlight.

"Paradise," says Sisko.

 _Stay alert,_ warns the voice in his head. _They see you as a threat here. The rules and the laws don't apply to you; not in the same way as everyone else._ He warily scans the field. There are no other players, no spectators… at least, none he can see...

But there is an umpire: Agent Sloan is stood by first base, fastidiously wiping the sand away. Bashir tightens his grip of the bat.

"Something on your mind Doctor?" asks Sisko.

"No, no," he replies with a slight, ever-pleasant smile. "Ready when you are sir."

Sisko goes into his wind up…he pitches. Bashir keeps his augmented eye on the ball. He swings. He hits. The ball soars away into the blue endless sky.

"Strike One!" calls the umpire.

"I hit it." The Englishman gestures politely in the direction the ball took. "Didn't you see?"

The umpire gives him an icy smile. "Strike One," he repeats.

Swallowing his anger, Bashir returns to the plate and raises his bat. Sisko pitches. He hits.

"Strike Two!"

Far beyond center-field the ball bounces down the empty stands.

Bashir has this game figured out now. _The rules don't apply to me. Not in the Federation. No matter what I do,_ _no matter how perfectly I play… I'm going to lose._ He has the urge to hit the last ball directly at Sloan's face…

 _No,_ says the voice in his head. _Don't hurt anyone. Don't give them an excuse. Stick to your rules; even if they ignore theirs._

He raises his bat for the third and final time. "Throw the damn ball again."

"Doctor, maybe I should-"

"Fucking throw it." He catches himself. "Sorry, Captain. Go ahead please. I'm ready."

With a nod, Sisko pitches again. Bashir swings wildly, he spins: the wood of the bat makes contact with the ball and…

His entire consciousness splinters. Shards of himself… whoever _he_ was…fall across time.

 _Too many sounds. Too many lights. Too many sensations._ Everything streams in at once. _Too much_ … _existence._ All the days, all the seconds. _Too much. Too many._

Like looking up and trying to count every raindrop falling in a storm.

 _Everything. Everything is happening at once._ The bells of St Paul's. Laughter in Quarks. Sobs in a hospital. 3.1415926535. Phaser-shots. The war. 3.1415926535. Two drunken men singing Jerusalem. Music. Voices. _Too much_.

"Captain," says someone. "Bio-memetic gel is an extremely dangerous compound as you know. I can't release it without some idea of where it's going."

"Perhaps I didn't make myself clear Doctor. This isn't a request, it's an order."

 _It's all…together!_ The Englishman in Lakat. The Patient. The Doctor. The Young Lieutenant. Julian. Jules. One life. _My life._ He sees himself, follows himself, talks to himself on every day, in every minute, at every age.

 _I'm there. I've always been there._ Alongside every moment. Scattered across time. _Unseen, unheard._ A fractured phantom whispering in the dark.

2374\. The height of the Dominion War. Doctor Julian Bashir, Chief Medical Officer, DS9 exits his Captain's office. In the young man's hand is a PADD: an order in writing, which he can do little about.

"Say something!" The older Bashir trails behind him, unseen and unheard. "Go back in there and tell him you won't do it. Tell him he's wrong. Tell him to go to hell. Tell him anything!"

But his younger self has reached the turbolift now. He punches the call button.

"People will die because of what you; because of what we do today." Bashir follows him onto the lift platform. He hovers at his shoulder; a tired, dishevelled un-angelic angel. "For _fuck's_ sake! You _have_ to _fucking_ hear me! You _have_ to _fucking_ listen!"

"Promenade."

The lift lurches and descends into the gloom of the turbo shaft.

The levels chug by. The younger Bashir closes his eyes. Confused, conflicted; he seethes with silent anger and silent doubt. Lights from the passing corridors flicker and shadow across his face.

Beside him, the older Bashir whispers into his mind. "This is wrong."

The younger man's fists clench.

"You know it. You do."

"Hold."

The lift shudders to a stop.

"Sisko is a good man," says the younger Bashir to himself and to the dark. "I trust him. He saved my career. He let me stay. I owe him my loyalty. I owe him everything."

"No, you don't!" Bashir throws his arms up in exasperation. "Not like this. You have to hear me. He wouldn't want you to -"

"And I have to be careful," the younger man continues with increasing agitation. "I have to be the model officer. Blend in." He runs his hands through his hair. "If I step out of line again; if I go around questioning orders…"

He stops. His fingers are resting on the back of his skull, tracing over the scar left by Section 31's neural implant.

"They can do anything to me," he whispers.

 _They'd been inside his mind: recording his thoughts, testing his responses, picking him apart._ The older Bashir hesitates. _It was only last week for him_ _._ He suddenly feels very protective of this lost young man, alone in the dark, desperately struggling to understand what had happened to him.

"It's alright," he says gently. "You can be angry. Julian: you're supposed to be angry. They tortured you."

"No," the younger Bashir argues back. "Torture doesn't happen in the Federation. On Cardassia; on Romulus yes, but not in -"

Bashir blinks. "You canhear me."

"Leave me alone; please."

"You have always been able to hear me."

The younger man concentrates and tries to block out the voice in his head.

The voice in his head that questions; that dissents; that he just can't get to bloody shut up.

The voice that's always been there, keeping him alive. The voice that raged against the nonsense spouted by his father and filled the silences left by his mother. That angrily pointed out _all the other things_ in that family which didn't quite measure up.

The voice that told Jules stories to make him feel safe. Impossible tales about aliens and distant planets and a man who ran away and spent a lifetime living in the stars.

The voice that convinced him to be a doctor. That audibly cringed every time he made a pass at Jadzia and nudged him toward the feminist section of the database.

The voice that told him to trust Garak, right from the start.

The voice of experience. The voice of compassion. Guiding him, unwinding across time like Ariadne's thread through the Labyrinth. The voice of the man it'll take him half his life to become.

"It isn't linear," says the older Bashir. "I'm not changing anything."

"Please," whispers the young man in the dark at what he thinks is his conscience, "this is the only place I have ever belonged. Let me have a home. Let me have that chance. Let me blend in. Just… for a little while. I need a break…"

"Alright." He backs away from him, unsure what to do next. "But when you want to talk about it; I'll be with you, I'll be here."

"Promenade," calls the younger Bashir.

Resuming its journey the turbolift staggers downward for a few more seconds before coming to a jarring halt. The doors open.

And the sights and sounds from twenty years in his past hit the old doctor like a burst of Gag'h Blood Liquorice in the mouth.

 _I'm on the Promenade. I'm home!_ The latest infestation of Klingon Mugwumps swoop past him and up into the rafters. He laughs. _Everything is_ exactly _as I remember it!_

Alien shoppers ooze, swarm and slither about the stalls. At the docking-bays, Ferengi hustlers unload goods shipped in from all corners of the known galaxy.

 _And the stench! Christ._ He coughs. _Now_ that, _I had forgotten_. _Too many lifeforms, in too small a space, emitting too many gases… not to mention, Morn._

 _That overwhelming Promenade smell; a thick bouquet of persistent, grubby life._ _Like_ _pickled fish rusting. And the chlorine of the air filters. And the alien spices! And the honeysuckle scent of a Triffid in bloom as Lieutenant Vilix'pran goes past._

He walks on further.

 _The shops. The Klingon restaurant. My old surgery._ _And there's Quarks!_ He laughs again. Merry cries of 'Dabo!' echo invitingly from inside. _Constable Odo doing his rounds… and the Replimat, packed full with lunchtime diners and…_

"Garak." The younger Bashir freezes.

"Garak," repeats the older Bashir. "Still in exile from his homeland, still sat alone at a table for two." Quietly sipping a Rokassa juice, the Cardassian watches the lunchtime rush with a probing, chameleonic gaze. Observing. Searching.

His younger self bolts behind the nearest pillar.

Invisible to everyone but the Prophets, the older Bashir stays where he is.

 _Garak looks… lonely._ Next to a vase of irises, the Replimat's usual choice of table decoration, is a cup of Tarkelean Tea. Ordered in hope, it's now gone cold. _He's brought along a book too_. Bashir moves to read the title. _An Enigma Tale; the kind where everyone is guilty_. _Translated into English and waiting to be lent._

Garak traces a reptilian claw over the cover before putting it away in his tailoring bag.

"His friend hasn't shown up again." The ageless Captain Sisko stands next to Bashir.

"No," he whispers.

"And he doesn't know why."

Unseen and unheard, the two men outside of time watch Garak move the vase of irises closer. He studies the Earth flowers, as if somehow, somewhere, deep in their tangled swirls of violet and yellow, they hold the answer to his puzzle.

The younger Bashir peaks from behind the pillar to check he hasn't been spotted.

Sisko nods in his direction. "You aren't going to try and convince him to have lunch?"

"No," says Bashir.

"Why not?"

"Because I remember this. I remember hiding, I remember being him. And he's right. It isn't safe. Not for him. Not for Garak. We were being watched."

His younger self makes a clumsy dash across the promenade, taking refuge behind a barrow of logically stacked, logically shaped triangular Vulcan watermelons.

"They'd already accused him of being a Dominion spy. How could he carry on having weekly rendezvous with a former member of the Obsidian Order? With the son of Enabran Tain! How would that have looked? Section 31 would have crucified him."

There's a dull splat from behind the barrow.

"Watermelon. Elbow," he remembers with a flush of past embarrassment. A large, porpoise-like, literally green greengrocer bears down on his offending younger self. Bashir turns his attention back to the lunch table.

"He waited. I never showed up." He watches Garak reach out and gently touch the petals of the irises. "I couldn't tell him… I couldn't." He's speaking directly to the Cardassian now. "I couldn't say. It wasn't safe."

"There's an empty chair," points out Sisko.

"He doesn't even know I'm here."

"Does that matter?"

"It wasn't safe."

"It is now. It is for you."

"But it _wasn't_ then." He turns his back on Garak to lessen the temptation. "It wasn't safe. It wasn't okay. It should have been; bloody hell, we were only having lunch - but it wasn't. And I won't sit down with a man who can't see me and pretend that it was."

The younger Bashir has escaped the grasp of the greengrocer now. Apologising profusely and mumbling vague assurances he'll 'stop by with some Latinum, later', he hurriedly mingles into the rush and is lost in the world of twenty years ago.

"It should have been," repeats the older Bashir in a whisper. He closes his eyes to imagine. To make-believe. To allow himself the consolation of a decades-old daydream for one last time…

He'd wake up in the morning and the first thing he'd see, would be Garak.

That was it. That was his daydream. That was the fantasy. No romantic gestures; no grand declarations of love. No wild adventures on exotic planets; no spy games. Whether he was waking on Earth or Cardassia made no difference. London or Lakat; it simply didn't matter.

Garak was with him and they were about to spend their day together. That was enough.

The Englishman takes a deep breath _. That's the fantasy that isn't allowed._ _A story that can't ever be true. A pretence._ _A_ _lie._ _I've had enough of them in my life._

He lets his breath, his daydream and all of his pretences go.

"Nothing's changed," says Bashir quietly. "Twenty years later and it still isn't safe. Where would we go? Where would we belong? I can't stay on Cardassia, not anymore. And I doubt either of us would be welcome in the Federation."

"You can't be sure of that."

"Can't I? It was never paradise sir. Not for me. Not for a lot of people. We were never quite let in. If I went home, if I went to the Earth, tomorrow…would it really be any different?"

"That's a good question," says Sisko. "There's only one way to find out."


	12. Back To Reality

"You have to go back Julian. You have to return to the Earth. Speak out. Expose the conspiracy. Expose what the Federation and Starfleet Command have become; what they've done, what they tried to do to you."

The doctor looks to the Replimat; to the lonely figure of Garak still waiting at a table for two. "Is that another order sir, or a request?"

"It's a prophecy."

"A prophecy!?" Bashir laughs: his Captain doesn't. _Oh God. He's serious._ Absolute terror swells inside him. "Sir! I'm not you! I'm not a hero! I'm not a leader or some messenger sent by the Prophets!"

Sisko places the baseball into mid-air again. It hangs there, stationary; static. Bashir gangles around it in a panic.

"I don't even believe in thebloodyProphets! I'm a doctor, just a doctor."

"A _Starfleet_ doctor."

"Twenty years ago! I'm not anymore!"

Sisko reaches to the baseball and gives it an absentminded tap. Red stitching buckles, leather skin wrinkles and in an instant the ball turns itself inside out and into the Earth.

Another tap: the miniature globe sets spinning. The dark side of the planet turns into view. Bashir watches the continents pass. _Europe, Africa, Asia._ _All outlined by the glow of a thousand coastal cities, all twinkling with light._

 _A utopia._ _A tiny marble of blue and white, suspended in space._ Calling to him. _Eternal. Reassuring._ Bashir tries to tear his gaze away. _Unchanging_. _Stagnant._

"I'm an Augment. I'm illegal."

"And you think no one on Earth will listen to you."

"No, that's not it...Captain…that's not…"

The world is spinning faster now. It tugs at him. Drawing him in closer… closer…

Closer.

The station around them melts away. Reality recedes, rushing past. The wave of space-time breaks…

…and one home port becomes another.

 _London!_ He spins about. _The promenade by the Thames!_ They're down by the jetty, down by where the river bends. Two invisible men, outside of time, stood where five centuries ago now, the docks used to be.

Across the water, the bells of St Paul's ring out from the north bank _._ Twice as old as the entire Federation, the Cathedral's spires soar toward the clouds. High above, the seagulls and the starships circle in the clear 24th Century sky.

"Home," says Bashir and partly believes it. "Earth."

 _Paradise…_

The sun is shining but the air is cold. Around them, wrapped in scarfs, the Londoners of 2395 pass-by. Vulcans, Klingons, a few Bajorans. Mostly humans. _Smiling, chatting; looking for places to eat lunch; going about their daily lives._

Sisko is smiling too. He nods the doctor's attention behind him.

In the corner of an outdoor café, sits a future Julian Bashir: clean-shaven, hair tidied up but still wearing the same Cardassian clothing. A Starfleet combadge is pinned to his lapel. He's talking. Opposite him, sits another middle-aged man.

 _A middle aged man… scribbling furiously on a journalist note-PADD. A long-limbed man…looking very much like his father's son…_

"Jake!" says Bashir.

"Jake Sisko," says the Captain with pride, "Chief Political Correspondent of The Times _._ He's the one you tell. He's the one that'll listen."

Bashir watches as his future-self continues to talk. And talk and talk and talk. The table is a good ten meters away. Only a few words of the one-sided conversation drift over to him on the promenade:

…"Bio-memetic gel"… … "Eurai"…

…"Starfleet Command"…

…."The Mayflower"…. …"orders"

…"Section31"… …"Garak"… …"love."

 _I'm speaking too fast._ Bashir can tell, even with the distance. _Jake can't keep up; he can't take everything down._

But the future doctor with the combadge can't stop talking, not now. The silence has burst: the truth pours out of him.

"You're no hero Doctor," says the ageless Captain Sisko. "But Earth has plenty of heroes. And believers and saints. And people who are _absolutely sure_ what they are doing is _right_. What paradise needs; what it lacks… is a heretic."

He smiles again. "A heretic made out there, in the wilderness. Someone who asks questions; who doubts. Who just doesn't know when to shut up..."

"I can't."

Bashir turns his back on the promenade and the vision of his own inescapable future.

"Don't make me do this sir. Please. Don't make me go back. You're my Captain. I'd walk into hell for you. But paradise? You don't understand."

"You think you're not up to the task?" guesses Sisko. "You're afraid the people here won't believe you?"

"I'm afraid," says Bashir, "they won't _care_. I'm afraid nothing will change."

He gestures at the tranquillity surrounding them; at the smiling, happy people passing by.

"Look around sir. The war, when it comes, won't come here. And Vreenak's death, Eurai, the conspiracy; all the murder and the lies… that happened long ago or far away. Stand here, on this promenade and tell me it doesn't feel easy to ignore. Tell me it doesn't feel… _liveable_ with."

He leans against the wooden railings.

"Nothing will change. The Federation will go on as it's always done. The distant wars will go on. Section 31, or something like it, will continue to exist. And I… " He stops and lets the words run silently in his head.

 _And I still won't be able to live in the city where I was born and practice medicine…_

 _Listen_ , whispers his mind to the Captain. _Try to understand._ _Listen to what this world looks like through Augmented eyes…_

"There are limits," he says softly, "on what people like me are allowed to do; what we're allowed to be; where we can travel. The rules, the Law, the Federation Charter: they don't quite apply to us."

"They don't," agrees Sisko. "Not in the same way."

"And everyone on Earth _knows_ that. They _accept_ that. Some of them might not like it; might not think it's fair. But…it's a good deterrent; prevents genetic tampering; keeps the playing field _equal_. Stops a repeat of the Eugenics Wars. And put like that, well…"

Bashir looks out across the water.

"… the freedoms of a few Augments are a small price to pay for the safety of Paradise. So, they learn to live with it. Because _they_ can live with it. And they can live with politicians on podiums who say whilst, they _assume_ , some Augments are nice people, hidden amongst us, is a Khan. And I wonder, I have always wondered; if they can live with that then…

…what will they learn to live with tomorrow?"

The Captain has no answer to this question.

The two men silently watch the river flow.

"Things can get better Julian," says Sisko after a long moment. "They have before. But… progress isn't linear. It can stagnate. It can go forward. It can go back; right back to where we started. It's painful and it's slow. In the end all you can do is keep stepping up to the plate. Keep playing."

Reaching to his chest, the Captain frozen in time takes off his combadge.

"The moral arc of the universe is long Doctor, but it does bend toward justice…if people; if _you_ push it that way."

"How?" says Bashir, hopeless.

"The same way you've always done it. The same way it's always been done. By being there. By living as honestly as you can. By swapping stories, swapping ideas. By sitting down at a lunch table when it isn't allowed. Making a choice to be with who you love. By a thousand small acts, that on their own don't seem important, but put together…"

Sisko pins his combadge to the doctor's chest.

"… make all of the difference in the universe."

Bashir looks down at the Starfleet insignia, traced in gold. It's sat there, above his heart; matching the one pinned to his future self.

A sudden wind blows. _Salt._ He can taste salt in the turn of the air. _The open sea is calling._

"Goodbye Doctor," says the ageless Captain Sisko. "When you see Jake, tell him I love him."

It's morning when the doctor wakes up; and the first thing he sees, is Garak.

Bashir smiles. _Garak._ _Leant over his patient_ ; _attentive and concerned._ Every detail of the Cardassian's face pours into him _. The reptilian scales. The angular ridges. Skin, rough and grey and cold to the touch._

 _A face so plainly_ _other_ _; so inhuman…and yet…_

 _And yet…_

He lies there, looking at Garak, for a long time.

 _The Gardener. The Tailor. The Son of Tain. Parmak's benevolent Legate._ Bashir searches deep within his eyes. _And there he is._ _There's Elim: there's the little boy locked in the dark._ Along with countless other masks; a hundred other hues and personas.

The doctor can see them all. Every single one. He can see what no other living being ever will…

The infamous Elim Garak as he _really_ is. The monster and the myth. A transparent liar; who can no more help bending the truth than a prism can help bending the light.

He pushes himself up toward him.

"Wait." The Cardassian pulls back. "What are you doing?"

"Making a choice."

He kisses Garak. One clumsy, gentle kiss: _absolutely_ awkward and _absolutely_ _necessary._

A kiss that expands out across time and fills the years of silence and doubt. A patient kiss, that was always waiting. A lingering kiss, that will always exist. Undestroyable. Undeniable.

A kiss that heralds something new. Something different.

Garak starts to laugh. His lips break away from Bashir's. "I _knew_ it!" he lies, triumphantly. "I knew you loved me!"

With a long-suffering sigh, Bashir sinks back onto the sofa. "No you didn't."

"Yes I did!" he says, circling the room with glee. "Right from the start."

"If that's true, then why didn't you say anything?"

"My dear Doctor, a good poker player never shows his hand! It takes all the fun out the game." Garak stills. He blinks. His smile fades. "You weren't wearing a combadge before..."

 _Sisko's combadge_. Bashir's hand goes to his chest. It's still there, above his heart, broadcasting out a beat all of its own. He traces his finger around the insignia's edge: confirming its presence, giving himself resolve.

"Garak," he begins as gently as he can, "there's something I need to do -"

"Julian!" Both men start at the interruption. Molly stands in the doorway, a now unnecessary hypospray in her hand. "You're awake!" She rushes over. "How are you? How do you feel?"

"Fine," says Bashir. He gives her his ever-pleasant smile.

"We were so worried!"

Her palm is slapped against his forehead, checking his temperature. "Molly, really, I'm fine." He tries to see past her; to see Garak. But the Cardassian has slunk back into the shadows.

"Don't get up too quickly," she fusses.

The doctor ignores this advice. He looks around. There's one person missing.

"Where's Giel?" he asks.

"How could you just let him go!" Bashir paces the Leyik-skin rug. "How could you not even notice he was gone!"

Garak doesn't answer. His ear to the fireplace, he turns the vase on the mantle first one way then another, as if it were a combination dial. On the floor, Molly is half way through stripping down a photoelectric rifle. She blows years of accumulated dust from the barrel.

 _He's still a boy._ _He's my responsibility._ Bashir wrings his hands. "It's dangerous out there!"

 **Click**. A concealed compartment springs out from the hearth. Reaching into it, Garak pulls out a disruptor. "Another addition to the arsenal Lieutenant O'Brien." He hands it to her.

Molly conducts an inventory of the weapons uncovered from Tain's study so far. "Energy whip, gravimetric crossbow, disruptor…some sort of poisonous orchid..." She holds up a chromosomal grenade. "What's this?"

"Messy," answers Garak.

She adds it to her holster belt.

"I have to…" Bashir desperately tries to formulate a plan. "I have to go look for him."

Garak rolls his eyes. He slips the dagger from his sleeve lining.

"I have to bring him back. Before he…" The doctor trails off. He swallows. Throwing his arms in the air, he begins to pace again. "Where _could_ he have gone?"

"You _know_ where," says Garak as he uncovers a repeater-phaser from behind the skirting board. "It's obvious. Straight to the Obsidian Order to betray us. To turn you and the Lieutenant in as enemy aliens and fulfil his duty to the state."

Bashir won't take the rifle Molly is urgently trying to give him. "Giel wouldn't do that."

"He's a Cardassian," says Garak with pride. "Of course he would."

"He isn't you. He isn't Elim."

"Maybe not, but -"

"He deserves a chance!"

"- but," continues Garak over his interruption, "he _isn't_ Jules either! He's a grown man not some innocent child! For once in your life, please, my dear Doctor, recognise _who_ you are trying to save."

"We need to move," says Molly. "The Order could be here any minute."

Garak nods in agreement. "I'll go first, check the coast is clear. If we can get to the end of the street without either of you being seen, we can -".

He stops. Listening.

 _A noise._ Bashir hears it now. _Outside in the hallway._ The thud of one foot, followed by another. Slow, heavy. A split second later and Garak is behind the door, dagger ready. Molly reaches for her phaser.

The latch turns. The door opens.

It's Giel.

 _Oh, thank God._ Bashir's relief quickly turns to anger. "Where the hell have you been?!"

"Garak's apartment." Giel gives him a puzzled look. "Why are you shouting at me?" Taking a Bajoran idol from Tain's desk, he uses it to prop the door open.

"Did you see Parmak?" asks Garak.

"No. He wasn't there." Bending down, the boy reaches for something on the floor in the hallway. "The Obsidian Order were though."

"The Order?"

"Yeah, searching the place. Give me a hand with this will you? It's _really_ heavy."

With a groan of effort, Giel drags Garak's battered box of Earth books into the study and onto the Leyik-skin rug. A heartbeat later and the box is open, Giel crouched over it. He traces his index finger over the books, caressing their spines. Protective. Loving. He hums happily.

Bashir keeps as calm and Sisko-like as he can. "You went back there; you risked being arrested, risked being shot…for the books?"

"They would have burnt them."

" _For the books!_ " With a yelp of joy, the doctor leaps toward him. "You went back for the books!" He grabs Giel and spins him around in a hug, laughing.

Garak sighs wearily.

Bashir bounces over to him. "He went back for the books! Can you believe it!? _For the books!_ I told you he was good! I told you I could save him! He was going to be one of the Order: now he isn't! He's changed! Molly – did you see? Giel went back for the books!"

"Yes Julian, I know."

"Yes yes, the boy _saved_ the books." Garak is looking up and down the hallway to check Giel hasn't been followed. He shuts the door and double-bolts it. "Yet another triumph for idiotic sentimentality over prudent good sense."

But Bashir isn't listening. _I feel like I did when I first started out! Before the war. Before Jadzia._ _Idealistic._ _Inquisitive._ _Alive_ _._ Twenty-seven years old and ready to make a difference in the universe. He drops to his knees and begins to root through the books.

Giel moves eagerly to join him. Garak's hand obstructs the boy's path.

"And if it had been something else, Montag Giel? If it had been Doctor Bashir rather than the earth books in need of rescue from my apartment: would you have gone?"

"Maybe," says Giel, unconvincingly. The tailor's claws are unsheathed.

"Hmm," says Garak.

 _Ah-ha!_ A book at the bottom of the box catches Bashir's eye. He digs it out and holds it up to show Giel. The black and white cover is emblazoned with three large symbols of Standard. _Symbols I know he definitely can recognise…_

 **007.**

"Double O Seven," whispers Giel. "A James Bond." A James Bond who's cover he hasn't seen before! A James Bond he hasn't read yet! He rushes over to him. "You don't have this one, do you Doctor? This is new?"

"Yes, it's new," says Bashir. He reviews the four-hundred-year-old book with refreshed enthusiasm. " _Live And Let Die._ Oh, this is a great one. You're going to love this."

"It needs translating." Giel is already moving toward Tain's desk. "I'll find you a pen."

" _If_ I could _drag_ us tediously back to reality," says Garak. "Our current situation is as pressing as it is bleak. This world is going to war. If either the Doctor or Lieutenant O'Brien are discovered, they will be killed. The Obsidian Order is out there. The mob is out there, roaming the city."

"We need to get away from Cardassia," says Molly.

"The spaceport," says Bashir. "It's only ten minutes from here."

Garak sighs. "Two humans just out for a stroll through the streets of Lakat? That will attract _some_ attention. And even if you _do_ get to the port unseen; finding a ship in Cardassian space bound for the Federation right now would be a miracle."

The universe conspires, yet again, to undermine Garak as on cue, pinned to Bashir's chest …

…Sisko's combadge chimes.

A second later and Molly's badge echoes the noise. A woman's voice crackles through the comm. "Calling any survivors of the USS Mayflower. This is the extraction ship Temeraire. Please respond."

The study falls silent. No one moves.

"Surviving crew of The Mayflower. This is Captain Latimer of the USS Temeraire. If anyone can hear me, respond."

Garak places his hand gently on Bashir shoulder. "Time to go."

The doctor is numb; immobilised.

"Lieutenant O'Brien," says Garak, "if you would be so kind."

With a nod, Molly hits her combadge. "Lieutenant O'Brien, Chief Engineer."

"Lieutenant!" Captain Latimer's voice betrays her surprise. She obviously wasn't expecting a reply. "Are you a prisoner O'Brien? Are you injured?"

"No ma'am."

"And the other survivor? We're detecting another human life-sign and combadge in your vicinity."

"Yes ma'am. That's…"

Bashir holds his breath.

"…that's Milosz," Molly says finally, giving her father's best friend the cover of a dead man's name. "Our Chief of Security. He's been…finding us some Cardassian clothing, ma'am." She cringes at the awkwardness of the lie. "For camouflage."

"Stand-by for transportation."

"No!" shouts Molly. "Not yet!" Her gaze flicks knowingly between Bashir and Garak. "There's a patrol nearby. They might hear the beam out. Wait a few minutes and they'll have moved on, ma'am. We'll be ready."

"Understood. Temeraire out."

"Come with us." Bashir moves toward Garak. "Come with me."

"My Dear Doctor. That ship will take two human survivors all the way home and not trouble to confirm _who_ they are. But if they have a Cardassian with them?" He gestures at Giel. "Or two? That would lead to all sorts of questions..."

"We'll think of something. We'll do what we've always done. We'll lie."

"Oh, I've given up lying," says Garak. "Everyone's doing it nowadays. The field is overrun with amateurs."

"Garak…"

The clock on the study wall chimes. It's midday.

 _It's lunchtime._ Bashir touches his forehead to Garak's. _It's still lunchtime; we still can't be together; and it's still you. After all these years, still you..._

"I'll come back," he whispers.

"I'd like to think so." The Cardassian smiles. "But, we live in uncertain times…and who can say?"

 _"_ _I_ _can_ _._ I can say." His lips trace gently over Garak's. "I will come back," he whispers and kisses him to seal the promise.

"Ohhhh," says Giel. "Finally! I thought you'd never work it ou - "

"Giel," interrupts Molly.

"Yes?"

"Shush."

 _I will come back._ Bashir breaks away from Garak. Over by the balcony windows, Molly is adopting the standard beaming position. He moves toward her.

"You're leaving?" Giel trails after him. "But who's going to translate ' _Live and Let Die'_ for me?"

Bashir looks at Garak.

" **No** **.** Definitely _not_ Doctor. Not a _James Bond_ _._ No, no, no-"

But Giel is already advancing with the book. "If you work one chapter at a time, that's probably best. Doctor Bashir used to do the whole thing in one go and take _ages_ about it."

"Doctor," cries Garak as he tries to back away into the fireplace, " _this_ is an imposition!"

Bashir smiles.

"Okay," says Molly, as the two Cardassians start to squabble. "So: you're Chief Petty Officer Dimitri Milosz. You're Polish. You were born in Krakow. Anything more than that, stardate of birth, mother's maiden name, I haven't a clue. If they start asking questions… a bulkhead hit you during the battle and you've got amnesia."

"Right." Bashir contemplates the prospect of having to fake a Polish accent the entire journey back to Earth.

"And you have a limp."

"A limp?"

"Yes," says Molly. "Milosz got shot by a Jem'Hadar during the war so..."

"Fine," says Bashir. "Which leg?"

"What?"

"Which leg: left or right?"

Her brow creases.

"Molly!"

"Left," she guesses. Her gaze falls on the top of his head. "You're about six foot. Milosz was my height." She scowls as if he'd grown the extra five inches deliberately to annoy her.

"Well, what do you suggest I do? Shrink myself?"

"No. Just…stoop a little."

"Stoop?"

"Yes, stoop." She demonstrates. "Like this."

"Call the damn ship."

Molly hits her combadge. "O'Brien to Temeraire. Two to beam up."

"Leave me alone!" Over by the fireplace, Garak struggles to hold Giel at arm's length. "Will you _stop_ trying to give me that pen!"

"Goodbye Giel," calls out Bashir. "Don't do anything I wouldn't do."

"Hm? Oh, goodbye Doctor."

"Doctor! This boy is an infuriating pest!"

"Yes, I know." Bashir keeps his eyes locked on Garak as a familiar shiver of déjà vu runs through his body. _Garak._ The unmistakable hum begins. "I'll see you again Garak." Bright particles rain down. " _I will_ …"

His consciousness fades towards nothingness. And, just as it has many times before, a Federation transporter takes the doctor home.


	13. The Gardener Of Lakat

In an outdoor café by the river in Lakat, Garak waits at a table for two. A spade is propped up against his chair leg; a grow bag of plants rests on the floor. He watches the water flow and pretends his eyes are too old to see the fleet of warships in the sky.

 **Buzzzzz**. Clouds of Halkan flies swarm about him. **Buzzzzz.** _Such irritating creatures._ He tries to waft them away. **Buzzzzz.** With a groan of old age, he stretches into his grow bag and takes out…

… _A_ _Something_.

Something that _oozes_ and _wriggles_. Something that _hisses_ and _snaps_. Something that once, long ago, might have been a small pot of Earth Roses. A Lovecraftian nightmare of creepers and thorns; it drips Edosian poison and blooms with delicate flowers.

Of all his botanical creations, this one is Garak's favourite. He places the abomination on the tablemat.

"Lunchtime," he tells her.

The plant's pitcher fills and bubbles with acid. Hybridised traps bite and snap. Her tendrils squirm as she consumes the Halkan flies at a ravenous pace.

The world darkens suddenly; the air turns cold. Garak looks up. _Another warship._ _Passing low overhead and obscuring the midday sun._ For the third time in his life, Cardassia is preparing for a galactic war.

Thrown into shadow, the plant screams. Her creepers thrash in complaint. He moves her into a small patch of light by the salt shaker.

A platoon of new conscripts marches down the promenade. Garak notes their uniforms as they pass him by. _Orange Troops. The low-status recruits destined for front line service and high risk campaigns. The Expendables._

 _All Orphans naturally. No families to kick up a fuss when the bodies don't come home._

 _I used them without a second thought on Bajor…_

 _They'll be dead in six weeks._ He tries to commit as many of their faces as he can to memory.

"One Red-Leaf tea," says the young waitress. She approaches the table with a cup. Her eyes widen at the sight of the horticultural monster basking it's leaves by his dessert spoon. "What is _that_?"

"A Yateveo Pitfall crossed with an Earth rose. _Terra Rosa serpentium_. Adapted to survive in a Mesozoic climate and rooted in Cardassian soil. Part genetically engineered of course; but what isn't these days?"

The waitress watches the tendrils squirm. "It's…"

"Hideous?" suggests Garak.

"Extraordinary."

"Yes," he says, taken with the description. "Yes! _Extraordinary_. It is, isn't it." He looks her over with new interest. "What a _perceptive_ young woman. How nice we've met. Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Garak. I'm a gardener, as you can see…"

He gestures to his spade.

"A simple occupation. But a _soothing_ one."

 **THWOK**. The plant thrashes it's stem. A thorn hurls through the air and skewers an unsuspecting Halkan fly mid-flight. The waitress gasps. Her eyes light up as the insect plummets down. Landing in the pitcher, it dissolves with a hiss.

"How big can you grow them?" she asks excitedly. The hybrid glugs. "Can the acid digest things more substantial than flies? A man, for example."

"Why? Got someone in mind?"

She half-smiles. "I'm speaking hypothetically, of course."

"Of course," says Garak. He stirs his tea. "Tell me: do you work breakfasts, Ms…?"

"Regan. Goneril Regan"

"My lunch calendar is full at the moment Ms Regan. But I am looking for someone to join me at breakfasts."

His PADD, resting on the table, beeps and lights up. A message displaying the crest of the Justice Ministry appears on the screen.

 _The notification._ Garak holds his breath. _The information I've been waiting for; longing for. That I've been dreading._

"Would you excuse me a moment please?" he says as calmly as he can. "I must get that."

With a nod, Regan moves away to wait on the other customers. He swipes the note open.

 **Status request on CONDEMNED No. 314159, PARMAK, K.**

Your request has been received.

It is being processed.

Please stand-by. An update will follow shortly.

Panic breaks out in the tangle of Garak's mind. The voices argue over one another.

 _Face reality – he's dead._ _No_ _. They'd have executed him immediately. Maybe they sent him to a labour colony? Good as dead then._ _No_ _. It's been two months: he is dead. We can't be sure. Kelas is strong, he could still be alive._

 _Shut up Elim!_ shouts the Son of Tain.

 _No_ , say the rest of the voices, _Elim might be right. Wait for the update. Wait and see._

In the distance, the ambling figure of Giel approaches along the promenade. Garak reaches to push the other chair out for him.

"Agh," he groans, stiffening. _My back, again._ Propping himself straight with his walking stick, he takes a moment to breathe through the pain. _Old age is creeping up on me. One day, soon, the grandfather act will become a reality…_

 _A protégé might be a prudent idea_. He mulls it over. _Someone I can mentor; someone who will, in time, take care of things as my dotage sets in_. He watches Giel walk through the cafe entrance. _A Son of Garak?_

The boy stumbles over his own feet.

Garak sighs. "No, that will never do." His gaze falls on Regan taking orders at a nearby table. "But… _a_ _ **Daughter**_ of Garak."

The phrase rings out like a phaser shot.

 _Yes!_ _Yes!_ All the voices in his mind shout with enthusiasm. _The Daughter of Garak!_ _Or_ _better still; The_ _Daughters_ _of Garak._ _Two, maybe even three of them!_ His mood brightens. _Now,_ _that_ _is a retirement plan._

Giel reaches the table and drops into the opposite seat. Preoccupied, he slouches back. His brow knits in confusion.

Garak opens the menu. "So…how did it go?" he says casually.

"I'm not sure." The boy chews his bottom lip. "I reported back to the Order, like you said to. But they didn't question me. They weren't even interested. All they did was release me for war service."

"You'll have to go to the Conscription Office then."

"I've _been_ to the Conscription Office. They processed me; classified me A1 - approved for front line duty. But then, the Gul, she looked at her screen and mumbled something about me having 'family connections'?"

Garak is absorbed in his menu. "Oh dear; they're out of Poached Regova Egg again. "

"And 'specialist status' on the computer system!"

"I'll have the Eel-bird Linguini, I think. With Iotian Spiced Pudding to follow..."

"Are you listening to me? Garak: they think I'm some sort of expert! They're sending me to the Ba'aten Peninsula. I'm going to be an Evacuation Co-ordinator!"

"A _very_ important job. A _very_ sort after position."

Giel nods. "Yes, it must be. Because five members of my new platoon are the sons of Castellans. And Legate Vorlem's niece is going to be our Glinn!"

"Is she? Oh how _nice_."

"Perhaps I should go back? Tell them they made a mistake?

Garak gestures to his unopened menu. "Aren't you eating?"

"In a minute." He leans closer. "I had a look at the brief," he whispers, "and I can't see how the work requires any specialist knowledge? All we're doing is shuttling people about, a long way from any fighting."

"A long way from any fighting, in relative safety and exactly where the Doctor would want you to be."

"Where he would want me to be?" Giel hesitates. He tilts his head. "You didn't…do anything. Did you, Garak?"

 _Ah_. _Time for a distraction. Before the boy remembers I can hack into the Command mainframe. Before he figures out I can change a person's familial status on the system…_

Reaching into his grow bag, he takes out 'Live And Let Die'.

"You've finished it." Giel sits up straight. "You've finished the translation!"

Garak lures him in by reading the synopsis. "After the theft of _pirate_ _treasure_ from an _exotic_ island by the _dastardly_ Mr. Big…"

The boy leans forward in his seat.

"…Bond discovers the importance of _detailed_ reconnaissance and _meticulous_ preparation by staying in Whitehall andreviewing the transcription archives! Are 007's researchskills up to the task? And will the beautiful Solitaire show him how to _correctly_ format an intelligence report?"

He leaves a dramatic pause.

"Only time will tell in this, Fleming's second novel and exciting sequel to Casino Roya- "

"It doesn't say that!"

"Yes it does," lies Garak. "Right here in black and white." He shows him the cover. "See."

Giel snatches the book. Flicking to a random page, he scowls. "This is all wrong!" He reads the translation aloud. " _007 didn't hesitate_. _He shot Mr. Big in the back at point blank range because, as all_ _real_ _secret agents know, that's the best way to do it._ "

"An astute observation. Fleming was well informed on the realities of intelligence work."

"And listen to this bit! _A spy has no conscience, Miss Moneypenny; no remorse, no ego. Only a sense of professionalism. I had to leave M to be eaten by those sharks."_ Giel splutters incredulously. " _It was the only reasonable course of action."_

Garak sips his tea.

"You've added stuff in! You've changed the story!"

"I confess I may have been somewhat…liberal in my interpretation of the text at points. Used artistic licence, here and there, to adapt it for present-day Cardassia and remove some of the Human weaknesses of the original."

"But then you've made it different!" Giel draws his breath sharply. "Look," he says, spreading his hands on the table, "…all I want to know is… out of the whole story, which parts are true and which parts aren't?"

"My dear Montag Giel; _none_ of it is true. It's all fiction. All lies." He gives him his patented, charming half-smile.

Giel isn't won over. He folds his arms and sulks. "I can't believe you changed the story." He kicks the leg of the table.

Garak sighs. "If it's truth you're after, I'm happy to oblige. _Real life_ memories of a _real life_ spy. Insights gained over decades of _unswerving_ public service. I can tell you incredible tales that _actually_ happened.

The boy stays sullen.

"For instance; my mission of mercy to save Constable Odo. Allow me to set the scene: it was the eve of the Dominion War. We'd travelled for days, deep into the Gamma Quadrant. Arriving at the Founders' home world, I recognised immediately the -"

"The Doctor already told me that story," interrupts Giel. "You tried to commit genocide. You spent six months in a holding cell."

"Yes, well." Garak coughs. He searches his memory. "Ah! The first trip I ever took with the Doctor to Bajor! A _fascinating_ case of political intrigue involving a boy name Rugal who…"

"…who was a Senator's son being used as a pawn by Gul Dukat." Giel yawns. "He told me that one too."

"The time Doctor Bashir upset a telepathic Lethan?"

"Heard it."

Garak pauses. He glances at the Earth book. "How about when the Doctor shot me in the face?"

"What?"

"He didn't tell you about that, hm? _I_ _see_. All our other adventures recounted in great detail for your amusement. But that one, he left out. How _interesting_. I was unarmed too, I might add."

"Doctor Bashir wouldn't do that!" laughs Giel. He pauses. "Would he?"

"Oh, at the time he thought he was doing the right thing. But the man pulling the trigger always does."

 **Beep-beep.** _The PADD. The update! Kelas!_ Garak grabs the device. He taps through to the notification.

 **UPDATE:** **INFORMATION, 314159 PARMAK, K**

 **CLASSIFICATION:** POLITICAL PRISONER ( DISSIDENT)

 **SENTENCE:** 25 YEARS HARD LABOUR, A'WATH CAMP

 **CURRENT STATUS** : ALIVE

 _Alive._ All the voices in Garak's head whisper. _Alive. He's alive._ _We can find him. We can save him._

"Doctor Bashir shot you," says Giel, still trying to process the revelation, "…in the face…"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"A trifling matter. Something about protecting someone he cared for. Major Kira I think." Garak pauses. "Or was it Lieutenant Dax?" He waves his hand. "I don't recall the exact details."

"I can't believe he actually shot you."

The plant by the saltshaker burps. Garak begins to reach through her tangled creepers to gently brush her petals.

"Let this be a lesson to you, Montag Giel. Perhaps the most important one I can teach you. Never underestimate what someone will or won't do…once they _care_ , even just a little. If they're inspired enough; or compassionate enough…"

For good or for evil, the most ordinary people are capable of the most extraordinarythings. The most _extraordinary_ change."

The plant hums softly. She leans toward his touch.

Garak smiles. "Humans, Bajorans, Cardassians - it makes no difference. Always keep your guard up; but your heart _open_. Because there are times… uncertain times…when sentiment is the greatest strength of all."


End file.
